The Quantum Error: Progeny
by Rob Sears
Summary: Sequel to The Quantum Error. It has been two years since the end of the war, and Sam McLeod has found peace in his new universe with his quarian wife, Nya. But while vacationing on Rannoch, Sam and Nya will soon discover a shocking truth, one that has the potential to tear their family apart. The two will face terrible choices that define their past and their future. (OC-insert)
1. Chapter 1: Tragic Consistency

I had always thought there would be rain on a day like today.

Instead, the crisp early winter sky was bright and sunny, the stench of dead leaves and dying grass quickly reaching my nose. There was a light breeze in the air, blowing the limbs of nearby trees to and fro, creating a rustle of branches that could not be called anything else but a quietly contained roar.

If I concentrated hard enough, I could smell smoke in the air; evidence of people doing their best to combat the frigid atmosphere from their consumption of their carefully gathered firewood. Burning wood was a favorite scent of mine – it always evoked a sense of comfort and warmth as a result of basking in front of a carefully maintained fire. I could imagine the crackling and popping of the firewood as it burned in the homes, the thought almost making me smile as I could imagine the heat baking my frozen skin. It was just too bad that those memories were useless against the dour forces that were consuming my psyche at the moment.

Folk in this town were predicting a heavy winter this year. The grain silos were filled almost to bursting, the plows had been carefully maintained in preparation, and the appropriate clothing had been in heavy demand for the past few weeks. I didn't care, personally. I was not anticipating remaining in this city one more day. I just needed to make it past tonight and then I would be free to leave, finally able to shed just one more piece of emotional baggage I had thought had been left firmly behind already. I just wanted to get out of this weather at the very least; the thin air was causing my skin to dry out, yet another source of annoyance for me to consider.

The quiet voice of the preacher finally wafted above the frigid wind assailing my cheeks and threatening to flip up my short hair, rousing me back to the present. I focused enough to reassess my surroundings, trying to hone in on the large object positioned in front of me while a sea of people dressed in fine black clothing encircled it silently.

"Well, here I am again," I whispered to no one in particular.

The coffin was polished to a mirror sheen. It had silver handles, no trim, and no distinguishing features. The only thing that was unique about it was the person it contained within the smoothed wood and the relationship that said person once had with me. Other than this little procession, the group stood out easily amongst the stark flatness of the graveyard's plain, with no mountains or skyscrapers to define the area's location. If I could maneuver my gaze past the throng, I could peer out into a golden sea of land, utterly flat and featureless - the vast expanse of the grassland ocean projecting the seclusion I was feeling right now.

As the wind continued its ceaseless assault, I rubbed at my cheeks frantically in an attempt to warm them. My beard was closely cropped to my face but soft, not really that ideal at warding off frigid temperatures. In addition, the black suit that I had chosen to wear did not provide very good insulation. All it was doing was stretching tight across my broad and tall frame, the collar choking my neck. I tugged on the sleeves, trying to help encapsulate as much of my body as possible. The effort was useless as frozen daggers stabbed through the cloth, turning my innards to ice.

My wrist was throbbing again, more likely in response to the low pressures from an incoming storm. Absentmindedly, no longer paying the service any heed, I examined my wrist closely, folding as much of my clothing away as I dared, exposing a faint scar that completely encircled my arm where my hand met my wrist. I clenched my fingers together, biting back a grimace as the cold aggravated the stiff sensation. The wound had never healed right, the reattached nerve endings occasionally failed to transmit my brain's commands and the frigid temperatures were certainly not doing me any favors. Even years later, the actions of a knife-wielding lunatic were still messing about with my life.

With a final, stubborn, clench of my fist, I covered the wound up – the only evidence that my limb had once been severed. I shuddered, growing more pained by the minute, as I consistently grappled with my surroundings, warding off one demon at a time.

We had reached the part of the service where muscle memory took over and I struggled to move to the front of the line, directly in front of the coffin. As I walked up, I noticed that several of the mourners' faces were wet, streaked with tears. My eyes were conversely dry, strangely. I had no tears to shed, nothing left to give in the moment. All I could do was proceed as normally as I could and follow my part to the letter. It was what was expected of me… and I had been in this situation before, anyway.

One more funeral. One more person gone. I've been burying too many people throughout my short life.

The rose in my hand fell from my fingertips onto the coffin as my cold tendons loosened and released the object in their grip. The petals made a slight crinkling noise as they hit the smooth wood, audible even among this wind. My ungloved hand reached out and briefly brushed against the coffin, absorbing the last moment of closeness that I could ever hope to garner again. I was not a religious man, but a silent prayer ran through my head, pleading for a sign or even a sensation that I could find some meaning in this very span of time. Even an imaginary stimulus on my mind with ersatz warmth and assurances would have been welcomed greatly, just _something_ that I could glean that I was not going crazy.

Yet no such sensation arrived. The moment came and went, my fingers detaching from the coffin with a rough scrape, only raw gusts slicing at my fingertips. The notion of warmth was sliced to ribbons instantaneously.

Dejected, I stepped out of the line and let others deposit their roses and respects. I ambled around the coffin and shoved my hands in the pockets of my coat for them to thaw, glancing at the brand-new headstone that adorned the empty grave. It had been sandblasted the night before, the font in the granite rock looking so sharp that they could cut through metal. Out of curiosity I reached out, tracing the first few letters of the name permanently etched into the stone, destined to remain there for eons upon eons.

 _Patrick McLeod_ , the stone read. Born 2129, died 2188.

Almost sixty years my father had walked this earth, but to me I was looking back upon sixty years of a stranger's life. Who was this man to me? No one, that's who. Even though the evidence was all there – the relationship between me and my father, it was all just a farce from where I stood. An unfortunately constructed lie upon which I had been _told_ about my bond with, but I never had the memories to support the claims.

You see, up until the year 2182, my life as I knew it never existed. Not in this universe, to be exact. For my consciousness, there is at least 150 years of a gap in my head between the critical moment of now and the time when I actually began to exist. The maze of my head offered no exit, as while I now inhabit the year of 2188, I possess memories of my life that cognize and break off in the year _2015_. To explain the circumstances in total detail would be lengthy and boring in many aspects. Even I still have trouble fully mapping everything out sometimes.

All I knew for sure is that I was not always a resident of this universe, as in the one I was inhabiting right now. Six years ago, my consciousness was firmly rooted in the beginning of the twenty-first century, if such a thing can be believed. It was a dark time of my life then, and my story was supposed to have ended in the year 2015 when I deliberately made the choice to commit suicide in response to growing mental pains and therefore would provide an end to my so-called suffering.

Somehow, in a fantastical accident, I ended up where I am today – over a hundred and fifty years into the future. And not just any future, but a future derived from and made up of a universe depicted in a video game that I used to play in my relative "past." Naturally, I did not take the news well at first. I had tried every trick in the book to wake myself up in case everything I saw was a dream. Nothing worked, and soon enough I found myself thrust into a bevy of situations that I never could have imagined that I would ever experience and be exposed to a wide array of emotions so powerful that I had previously forgotten what it was like to feel again, no longer weighed down by the oppressive weight of depression and angst.

Here, I became many things. I had been a bystander, a coward, a soldier, a lover. Fearful, hateful, entitled, spiteful, redeemed, heroic, adored, complete. I faced down my wretched past and quashed it under my heel throughout my years of running and refusing to face reality. But there was now today to contend with and all those previously forgotten memories were in the process of being unearthed. One grave gets dug, another gets exhumed.

After finishing with their final respects, a few people broke off from the group to offer me their condolences. I'm so sorry, Sam, they said. I will pray for you, they said. He was taken too early, they said. I could only nod my head and mumble my thanks, despite feeling unable to emote. And why would I? All of the experiences that I had somehow managed to share with the man lying in the coffin were gone, all of them erased when my consciousness suddenly sprung to life just a few years ago. In my mind, in this universe, I had not shared a single, solitary moment with the man whom people called my father.

I was still not sure what he died from, nor did I feel like inquiring. His spouse, my mother, had been taken from an auto-immune disease about ten years prior, so I had never had the chance to know her here. I wanted to feel sorry. I wanted to care about the loss of two people who, intrinsically, I knew had been kind and loving to me in this life.

But I could only feel nothing for them now, which sickened and disturbed me.

The crowd gradually dissipated as everyone headed to the provided vehicles just a hundred feet away on the trail, escaping the blasts of air that were beginning to blow harder, storm clouds now encroaching on the horizon. I continued to stand by the grave, my throat unclenching as more and more people left me to my solitude. I guess I did not realize that the immediate proximity of these strangers around me had been progressively causing me undue stress. It made sense; I did not know any of these people – not really. Sure, many of them may be of my blood, but were they the exact same individuals that I recognized from back in 2015? The universe cannot replicate every single person perfectly, so why feel some connection to this crowd in the first place?

All these people, my relatives, my father, I had not spent a nanosecond of my being in their proximity – from my perspective. All of a sudden, I had been thrust into this moment, forced to accept my position, my relationship, from years of a supposed bond. No memories lingered, there was nothing for me to draw on to feel pain or love, just the nausea-inducing emptiness of loss.

A voice off in the distance was calling my name – an immediate cousin, perhaps, was waving me over to the lead vehicle near the road. Apparently it was time to leave. Insensitive prick.

Taking one final forlorn glance at the coffin, I sighed and trudged across the freezing ground toward the convoy. If looked hard in the distance, I could scarcely see the high rises of downtown Des Moines off in the distance through the ever-growing fog. The city had really rebounded after the war as it turned out; the agriculture and manufacturing hubs that were located in the state of Iowa had been relatively undamaged and were able to get back up to production rather quickly, bringing employment to the area in droves.

I hated this town. It was too cold and too flat. Despite the urbanization of the landscape, Des Moines had not managed to shake off its rural roots yet. Everything felt too wide, too empty, that I felt a pang for more interaction despite my current desire to be left alone.

Clambering into the front seat of the lead car, the tinted windows provided me an escape from the rest of the world. I was allowed to gaze freely, hand over my mouth, and ponder silently as the bulk of our cars proceeded onto our next destination. Behind us, the coffin began its descent into the earth, to be swallowed up into the ground from whence we had all come from once.

I cranked up the heat and pressed myself further into the supple leather of the chair. My limbs began to throb angrily as they thawed, preventing me from relaxing entirely on our journey. Focusing on the tall limbs of wire towers as we drove alongside them, my gaze went beyond the physical objects tied to this world of dirt and water and up into the beautiful blue sky and what lay beyond it.

I just hoped that when I escaped the confines of this planet after today, I could abandon my thoughts of mortality along as well.

* * *

The memorial service was held at a house that I did not recognize. Ostensibly I eventually realized that it had been my late parents' home, judging by the pictures of their likenesses framed on the walls. It was interesting to see how little I could glean of my life from looking at the pictures as very few actually depicted me in a manner that gave away my interests, my friends, or my career.

As if I thought it would be so easy.

Being now the only one left from this section of the McLeod family, it was expected that I would be subject to every single goddamn one of the people crammed into this house wishing to express their sorrow to me, never mind if they already did so at the actual funeral.

At some point I quickly became tired and nervous from the constant handshaking, somber nodding, and forced acknowledgements that I muttered some lame excuse about wanting to get some air, grabbed a glass of water, and stepped outside onto the deck of the backyard so quickly that I imagined myself suddenly turning invisible.

Almost immediately I regretted my choice. Night had fallen by now and the temperature had dropped even further to a bone-chilling 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, there was no way I could go back inside and fake my way through all that interaction, so I guess I was going to have to settle for shivering outside.

My breath was frosting and the water that I was stupidly holding with my bare hand had ice in it, causing my skin to get even colder. Despite the temperature, I took a sip from the glass, shuddering as it felt like my throat was freezing from the inside, but the liquid helped to dispel the aridness of my mouth. Damn the lack of humidity – yet another reason to dislike this place.

The backyard of the house was simple. It was barely a quarter of an acre large, completely fenced in, but the deck of the house had been raised to accommodate the above-ground hot tub that had been installed. A cover was currently over the tub, obviously, as it was too cold to take a dip into the water as well as being too expensive to heat in this season. The deck was made out of wood, peeling from the abuse the elements had imparted on it, the paint of the railing flaking away at my barest touch. I stared at my palm, watching the flakes blow away in the wind, into the cold dark illuminated only from the moon, the stars, and the gigantic space station situated in the sky.

The Citadel. A space station over 40 kilometers long currently locked into a geosynchronous orbit 200 kilometers from the Earth's surface. Built by a race of ancient machines, the Citadel was originally located inside of a nebula millions of lightyears away from Earth but during the war two years ago it was transported to Earth by its creators in an effort to defend the station, which turned out to ultimately be the key to victory. The tactic did not end up working for the machines; both the organic and synthetic inhabitants of this galaxy successfully rose up to fight and ultimately win by using the Citadel to turn its energy against its creators, wiping them out for good. Since then, the station had remained locked in Earth's orbit as no one managed to figure out a way of moving the station back to its original location – only the Citadel's creators had that sort of power and they were all destroyed. With no method to move the station back to its comforting nebula, the Citadel has remained where it was ever since, providing all earthlings another landmark to dot the sky with.

It was also where my home was located – the fifth ward, to be exact. An apartment located in a nice complex which reflected the comfortable life that I've been able to earn for myself. I work as an arthroscopic doctor for one of the most prestigious hospitals on the Citadel, and not to sound like I'm bragging (because it's true), I am one of the best in my field. The job certainly pays well and I am fortunate enough to actually enjoy the work that I do. With arthroscopy, there's no high stress surgery to be done, only slight repair incisions. No muss, no fuss. Keeps the stress down that way.

The door to the house slid open behind me, emitting a burst of conversation from inside, and I turned in the direction of the noise, setting my glass on the railing. An older woman with a sullen face, dressed in a conservative black blouse and skirt, walked out with a small box in her hands.

"Hello Sam," the woman gave a sad smile before pulling her blouse tighter. "It's awfully chilly out here. You must be freezing."

"Don't worry about me, Aunt Callie," I shrugged, the name of my relative inexplicably coming to mind as soon as the light fell across her face. "I'm not too concerned about the cold at the moment."

Aunt Callie nodded in understanding. She was in her fifties, but age was not doing her any favors. Already lines had begun to crease her face, her cheeks starting to sag a little. Crow's feet tugged at her eyes, creating channels, and streaks of gray had begun to creep up the roots of her hair.

"What did you think of the service?" she asked. "I thought the pastor gave a lovely speech."

I let my fingers run around the rim of my glass for a bit. "It was a nice speech. It was simple and short. If I knew my father, he probably would have approved. He wasn't much for flowery language."

"Is that why you didn't give a speech?"

My lips tightened in a scowl for a brief second. I faced my aunt, throat unconsciously clenching. "There was nothing to say that everyone didn't know. He was my father, he was a good man, and I'm sorry he's gone. That's all there is to it."

The words were filled with half-truths. I was projecting the image of the father I knew from 2015 onto the man I just buried hours ago in 2188. For all I knew this man could have been an abusive alcoholic that had beaten me every day of his life. Yet it seemed that my father's path in 2188 largely mirrored that of his life in 2015, fortunately for me.

"I know, dear," she sympathized, the answer making sense to her. "And I won't take up much more of your time. I have another reason for being here, you know. Your father… Patrick… we both know that he didn't have much in the way of personal possessions that were special to him, but he would have wanted you to have this."

Stretching her arms out, she offered the box in her hands for me to take. With shaking fingers (more from the cold) I carefully lifted it, finding that the box was made out of a smooth, dark wood. It weighed a few pounds, but it was not substantial to heft.

"I…" I mumbled, "I honestly don't know what to say, Aunt Callie."

My aunt simply closed her eyes and gave a warm shrug. "There's no need, Sam. Patrick was a good man, a good father, and he would have loved to-,"

"-Aunt Callie," I interrupted with a sigh, holding my hand up. "I… I appreciate you bringing this to me. I really do. But I think that I'd like to be alone now."

Callie stopped speaking abruptly, her eyes widening a bit as she realized that she was being just the tiniest bit insensitive. "Of course. I understand. I'll… I'll be inside if you need anything." She turned to go but once she had one foot inside the house she glanced back at me. "Oh, and please give my regards to your wife. She really is a lovely woman and I'm happy that you have someone like her in your life."

"My… wife?" I replied absentmindedly, distracted from a thousand different things running through my head. It was too late because Aunt Callie was already back inside, more desperate than I realized to escape the cold. I continued to stare dumbly at the people inside, all crowded around the fire sipping glasses of what appeared to be scotch. In that moment, I both envied and hated everyone inside for being so comfortable in their surroundings while I was the one suffering the most.

Although, I had no one to blame but myself for choosing to linger outside but so far frostbite was still preferable to facing the horde of relatives. I had never felt so introverted before.

Back into solitude once more, I slowly rotated back, facing the deck railing, and set the box that I was holding upon the scuffed surface. There were no latches to the container, no symbols to identify – an otherwise featureless container. The top part, I discovered, was simply a cover that could be slid along a set of rails, allowing me to reveal an object inside surrounded by soft felt.

Gingerly, I procured the object from the box and studied it in the low light. It was a smoking pipe, black, polished to a mirror sheen not unlike my father's coffin, I realized. It was curved, quite striking, and lined with accents of dull gold, almost like the malleable material's color had frozen in the chill. I had not used many pipes before in my life but I could tell that this was one that was quite expensive - at least several hundred credits worth.

Despite the seriousness of the moment, I gave a self-deprecating laugh. I was not sure if my father ever intended to me to actually use his pipe when after he passed away but I was also unsure if he knew that I had completely given up smoking about two years ago. During the war, I had realized that the act of smoking itself was a bit counter-productive towards my will to simply survive, which led me to kicking my habit cold-turkey. This pipe was lovely, but it would simply have to serve as a memento, a memory of my self-improvement.

As I placed the pipe back into the box and closed it, I prepared to go sinking deeper into the pool of my jumbled thoughts when a hand gently laid itself upon my shoulder, yanking me back from the deep end. Instinctively, I knew who it was. Out of all the people on this planet, despite my intense yearning to be alone, there was only one whom I would actively desire to be around.

Plus, who else in close proximity could have a hand with only three fingers?

Jitters ran down my spine, miraculously warming me, as I turned to find, not another relative, but a thinner, slightly more diminutive figure, whose face was obscured by a visor, colored blood-red, and their entire form was sealed inside an enviro-suit. A variety of clasps and belts wrapped around their torso, pinning down sheets of patterned fabric. The black metal of their helmet was capped off by a hood, black with white highlights. I could not see this person's expression through their visor, some of their facial features coming out smoky through the translucent material, but I had been with them long enough to tell exactly what they were feeling based on their body language, their voice, and even the slight positioning of their glowing eyes through what my gaze could pierce into the cloudy covering.

"You all right?" Nya asked me earnestly, eyes raptured as they flickered over my face, scanning for any signs of hurt.

I smiled in response to her concern and gently took her hand, squeezing it in assurance. "I'm hanging in there."

Nyareth, or Nya as she liked me to call her, was a quarian, one of many different species that inhabited this galaxy. She was the most distinctive looking individual in this house right now, but her actual form was eerily similar to a human's. Quarians were bipedal, although their legs were bent back much farther than a human's, and they had three fingers and three toes on each hand and foot. Their facial structures were identical to a human – they even possessed hair, but no one could really tell that unless they had the rare opportunity to view a quarian outside of their suit.

Quarians wore their enviro-suits because they needed to – their immune systems were too weak and too slow to adapt to any environment containing any foreign contaminants, thus they needed to seal away themselves into their own personal environments, sacrificing many sensations that other species took for granted, especially the sensation of touch. Many people were put off by the appearance of quarians and their lack to properly visualize any expressions, but I had never had that problem, oddly enough. Even more strange was that I would eventually connect with one on a personal level, far deeper than I had let anyone else in.

The two of us had first met several years ago, on the Citadel in fact, and over the span of a few years we kept on bumping into the other at the most random of times, slowly building up an attraction that morphed into something far greater, far more powerful. During the war, we would eventually declare our love for the other, a promise that we now kept years later.

Our hands were still clenched together. To quarians, touching one's lover was almost a ritualistic experience because it was extremely uncommon that a quarian would get the opportunity to shed their suit and finally let the stimuli that had been previously denied to them impart to their skin, rendered to a level of ultra-sensitivity from being isolated from such sensations for years on end. Just the act of pressing a fingertip to a tiny portion of a quarian's skin yielded reactions so vivid and intense that they almost caused quarians pain. Even with the suit on, the need for physical interaction, for a solid presence, was a bond that was lightyears more strongly engrained than it could ever be imagined for a human.

I had made my choice to uphold my portion of that bond unflinchingly. The brushed silver color of the ring adorning my finger was proof of that, as was the one on Nya's own hand, covered by the suit but the lump surrounding her third finger was still visible to me.

Those vows had been exchanged over six months ago. If there had been any reservations preventing me from making Nya my wife, then they had yet to rear their heads. In more ways than I could describe, marrying this quarian – no, this _woman_ – was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

Nya's eyes lidded upward – a smile – and her other hand stroked my face lovingly. "You're cold," she whispered in worry. "You need to get inside."

"I can't," I shook my head. "I cannot be trapped in a room with those people for another minute."

Nya gave a harrumphing noise and glanced through the windows towards the solemn mourners. "They're not all bad. Everyone I've met today has been very pleasant to me. They just want to express themselves to you because your father-,"

"-No," I shuddered out. "I don't want to hear them express themselves to me at all. All they have to offer me are memories that aren't mine. Just recollections from a time that I cannot remember. Everyone in there… they might as well be complete strangers to me. It just all feels _wrong_."

The eyes behind the visor widened slightly as Nya understood. Pulling herself in close, she wrapped her arms around me, seeking comfort (and possibly to steal some of my warmth). Her presence was greatly appreciated, not to mention needed, and I responded in kind, sighing as the hug began to shed some of the tension away that had been accumulating throughout the entire day.

"Everything just feels off," I murmured. "The funeral, the relatives. I buried my father today and I felt _nothing_. What does that say about me, Nya?"

"Did you love him?"

I chewed the inside of my cheek for a moment. "Of course I loved him. After all, he _was_ my father. He did as good of a job raising me that I could imagine."

"…But?"

"But…" I bitterly blew air from my nose, "I had thought that I had left my time with him in my past. I moved on after my little 'incident.' I made my peace, expected to never see him again. I found my purpose, found other people to care about." The first traces of a grin beginning to creep up on my features, I brought my hand underneath Nya's helmet and devilishly tilted her head up slightly. "I don't want to wallow in my past any more. I'd rather leave it all behind and look to more important things – more relevant things. I've had other people on my mind for a long time. Everyone in the house over there, that's not my family. My family is right here, outside on this deck with me."

That must have been the right combination of words to say because Nya shook her head in a self-deprecating manner and made her hug a little tighter for a brief few seconds. Suddenly, I did not feel so cold anymore, the frost melting from my cheeks as a new fire lit inside me.

"Would you like to go home?" Nya whispered. "Right now?"

"Yeah," I replied honestly. "I really would."

"Then why are we freezing ourselves to death out here?" She began rubbing my arms frantically, her ever-caring disposition working to make sure that I was looked after. As much as I had to constantly tell her to be just the tiniest bit selfish every once in a while, I admit that I found her instinct to look after other people, especially her loved ones, very endearing. "Let's take a shuttle back to the port, pick up some food, and get back to our apartment. You think anyone here will notice that you're gone?"

"I don't care," I shook my head before noticing that my stomach was rumbling in response to the prospect of a meal. I then realized that I had not had anything substantial to eat in hours. "Getting out of here and grabbing food is the best idea anyone could come up with right now. Anything in particular you might want to eat before we leave for the Citadel?"

Nya tilted her head in thought for a few seconds. "I'm not sure. You think there's a place in downtown that sells dextro pizza?"

I laughed and threw my arm around my wife while I cradled the box containing my father's pipe in the other. "You really have to ask? Honey, every major city on this continent, even Des Moines, sells pizza – both levo and dextro chirality."

"I'm liking this planet more and more," Nya mused as we quietly stole down the steps of the deck, sneaking around the side of the house using darkness as our cover. She glanced over at me and nuzzled her helmeted head against my shoulder. "Got you to finally smile today, though."

"On a day like today, the impossible became possible," I reflected as we reached the street, awaiting the lights of an approaching shuttle arcing away from the sky lanes hundreds of feet above our heads. Almost unconsciously, I slipped my hand into Nya's, our uneven-fingered hands working their way into a comfortable grip. I darted my gaze over and smiled genuinely, making certain that my expression was visible. "I know it's been a rough day, but… thank you. Thank you for coming with me. I'm just sorry that you have to be exposed to several of these morose things in my life."

Nya did not immediately respond, but I felt her fingers clenching ever so slightly in my hand. Her eyes changed orientation minutely in a smile that contained sorrow and regret, but also love and kindness. "You're welcome," she breathed.

You know, for someone who had let tragedy define the majority of his life, I have to say that this newfound peace and serenity, made only possible by this woman, made me reflect upon my bad choices that I made in the past. For this soothing presence, the extinguishing of my anguish, had I known that I only needed to look to those closest to me in order to find happiness, I would have been a mended man much sooner.

As it stands, I'm here now and I'm alive with the woman I love by my side. The future holds only intriguing possibilities for me, new experiences that can only lead to something greater. A future that was worth all of my pain to achieve.

Nothing could possibly derail all that, could it?

* * *

 **A/N: Guess what? Daddy's back.**

 **So... I may have lied when I mentioned earlier that _The Quantum Error_ would not be getting a sequel. At the time it was true, because I had no idea where I wanted to go with these characters. Over time, I eventually got a notion of what I actually wanted to do, and I spent a few weeks recently drafting and refining an outline. So, here we are. I was skeptical of creating a sequel at first partly because in the past, I've never made a sequel that I've considered to be good. One of the stipulations that I had for this story was that the main characters need to undergo additional development to their roles. I'm going to make sure that they continue to change and evolve as people so that this story does not feel like them simply running through the motions as a blatant cash-grab (even though I'm not being paid for this, heh).**

 **I'm not sure what people will be expecting throughout _Progeny_ 's run. I'm just going to say straight out that it will be radically different from what _The Quantum Error_ was in terms of story progression and tone. There will be a wealth of new characters that will be introduced, a whole bunch of violence, and some angst thrown in for good measure. And yes, since people responded quite positively in the last story, Nya _will_ be featured in every chapter since she was such a favorite.**

 **Just as fair warning, I'm in no way going to start on a regular schedule for chapter updates any time soon. My schedule is way too packed for that so this will be something that I will be working on occasionally, updating chapters as I go along. Hell, if people don't like it, I can always stop writing. Just be sure to break such news to me gently, okay?**

 **In the meantime, please let me know your thoughts on this first chapter. I'm always interested to hear what people think and if there are any elements that need updates. Personally, I'm very excited as to where the story will go from here. All I have to do is write the damn thing.**

 **In a way, it feels good to be back.**


	2. Chapter 2: Unpredictable Normality

Mist fogged up the windshield, the wipers doing little to purge the ever-growing fixation on my tunnel vision. Droplets beaded and merged, accumulating into masses greater and greater until they could bend to gravity no more, sliding down the clear glass and leaving troublesome streaks in their paths.

Spray mixed with a hint of sunlight. Fire evaporated water. I could almost taste splendor.

Tiny moments of euphoria interspersed between drab and tedium. Accompanying highs and lows that put me into a sense of constant alert.

It was the skidding of tires on wet pavement accompanied by the momentary panic that I was about to lose control did I finally let up on the accelerator, my foot feeling like it weight ten times its normal weight. The car jerked once and steadied as the wheels worked to dispel the inertia that had been steadily growing with my speed. Regaining the initial line of the vehicle back, I huffed out a quiet breath in victory – and fear. It had been a long time since I had felt actual g-forces pressing me in one direction and that unpleasant sensation of panic bubbling upward like bile seeped into my throat. I tasted bile. Apparently I was a little rusty at driving.

Supposed to be like riding a bike, right? One could always count on me to make the impossible possible.

My knuckles were white as I gripped the steering wheel of the car – an actual car, not a hovercraft, a shuttle, or a racing ship. The surface was leather, well worn, and yielded comfortably in my vice. The rumbling feedback that travelled up the steering column into my arms from the wheels on the ground only served as a reminder of the vehicle's necessary relationship with ground contact. Starships did not vibrate quite so heavily, after all – they were not limited to an earthly body.

The road I was driving along was spectacular, but quite dangerous at the speed that had been going. It twisted and turned as it hugged a cliff wall hundreds of feet high, the flaky brown stone crumbling away from the constant winds smashing against its nearly vertical face. On my left side was nothing but a drop off into the deep blue depths of the Pacific Ocean, sharp rocks spearing the surf and angled to impale any trespassers. I truly wondered if the flimsy steel guardrails lining the highway were enough to prevent cars like mine from going off the edge.

If I looked to my right, just above the lip of the cliff, I could see the brambly green pine trees tower amongst the boulders that were all lined up, as if they were prepared to pounce upon the road at any second. I could smell the evergreen aroma even through the windows of the sedan, sharp yet soothing. Eucalyptus mingled with the pines – the pungent but not rank scent flooding my nostrils and bringing thoughts of home to the forefront of my subconscious. The ocean churned and broiled on my left, powerful waves smashing into the sides of the continent, sending up gigantic plumes of spray that only added to the thick, morning fog. The sun struggled to pierce the misty covering, its glow diffusing and creating a landscape of surrounding white fire.

I passed a speed limit sign that read 50 MPH, but my speedometer was currently reading 65. There were no straightaways that I could perceive past the constant turns, but my foot seemed to mash the gas pedal of its own accord once again, as if my body was constantly cheering, "Speed up! Speed up!"

Foolish, but the panic had faded and the need for thrill gripped my veins, sending ice water into my blood.

Thankfully, there was no traffic crowding the coastal road. It appeared that I was the only soul occupying the highway, to my knowledge. Odd, Highway 1 was always known for being a popular road – the epitome of the term "scenic route." With each blind turn I made, plowing my car through the fog with its automatic beams trying to slice my way through the vapor, I was half-expecting to be facing an oncoming vehicle, or a police cruiser just waiting to bust me with a speedtrap, but the emptiness remained for the next twenty minutes. Despite myself, I depressed the clutch and reached down for the gear level, throwing caution to the winds as I shifted the knob up a gear, hearing the transmission begin to spool up just a tad bit faster from my actions.

Another turn brought me back out into sun and with it my hopes rose. The constant environment changes, the responsiveness of the vehicle, the smell of trees and the sea. It was beautiful.

A smile was beginning to sneak up on me until a flicker appeared in my peripheral vision, just down the road a bit – another vehicle? Finally, a sign of life! If anything, I increased the pressure on the gas and sent the car screaming down the road, desperate to find out for myself if I was truly alone. I yanked the wheel a bit after a particularly tight turn only to find that I had failed to gain any ground at all, only stuck watching as the car in front of me just reached the next turn to disappear from my sight.

This continued on for the next few miles. Every time I felt I was getting closer, it would turn out that I would only have a fleeting glimpse of my shadowy rival before they would make a turn and lose my gaze.

"What the hell am I even doing?" I grimaced to myself as I maintained my death grip on the steering wheel. What kind of eternal game had I jumped into? Was I destined to always follow this car – to never know who or what I was chasing?

Why was I even participating if I did not know the goal?

"I'm not sure," a voice unexpectedly piped up. "I would have thought you would have known from the start."

Heart in my throat, my head whirled to the side, finding that the passenger seat that I had thought to be vacant was actually occupied. Strike that, it _had_ been vacant. Yet despite the fact that there had been no conceivable individual or concentrated mass of atoms that occupied a set space in the seat next to me, matter had apparently appeared out of thin air to coalesce into the form of a person.

Impossibilities all around. These things should not surprise me so much.

Despite the brightness of the morning blazing through the windows, the occupant was draped in a shadow that unnaturally coated their entire form. It was like the light refused to touch that spot for fear of revealing something that no one should look upon. The stupidest thought of wondering if light could even feel fear popped into my head, but there was no scientific way to describe it and the logical part of my brain was self-destructing trying to accept it. As much as I tried to peer through the black veil, I could spot no distinguishing features about this person, other than the fact that their voice, and slender form, told me that it was a woman who was seated next to me.

"Who the fuck are you?" was my panicked rasp, not noticing that the car was beginning to drift from its lane, the steering wheel allowed to roam from my grip which had slackened.

"Someone close to you," was the cryptic answer.

"…Nya?" I guessed, making a few hasty jerks on the wheel to keep the car in line.

The shadow shook its head. "It is of no consequence. Ultimately I am of your creation."

"What does that mean?!"

The shadow turned its face towards me. For the first time, I could spot a defining feature that my gaze could latch on to: their eyes. They glowed unnaturally, but not with an evil flicker. Their soft glow spoke volumes of sadness, joy, love, and regret.

"You constantly chase the car," the shadow observed as it waved a hand towards the road. "You are trying to decipher my appearance. You cannot do both at the same time."

My arms were trembling as I took panicked glances from both the shadow towards the road, where potholes were now starting to appear from poor maintenance. "Who _are_ you?"

"Someone you love."

A throaty laugh emitted from the backseat. There was another person in this car too? Now I turned my entire body to face the newcomer, only I was surprised to see that unlike the individual in front, this occupant was not covered in shadow. The light fell across their face, or rather their visor, revealing a sickening green color with dull silver accents warped around their enviro-suit. This was impossible, I realized, because this person had been dead for a long time. My wrist twinged as it remembered the tickle the knife had made when it had cut my limb off. I recalled the initial gout of blood, followed by the numbness as this man had prepared to sink the blade into my neck.

" _Vhen_ ," I hissed.

"I'm pleased to see that you remember me, human," the quarian chuckled, leaning forward so that his foggy expression sent daggers in my direction.

Enraged, I teetered on the edge of clambering over the seats to tear this man's throat out. Vhen had tried to kill me several times in the past, very nearly succeeding, that to find him here in such close proximity to me immediately sent my blood into a boil.

"I'm dreaming again," I realized as it was the only way to rationalize this entire mess. "There's no way you're here, you bastard. I saw Nya kill you. You're dead."

Vhen shrugged and leaned back in his seat in an unnaturally casual manner. "And now so are you," he sneered.

Realizing what he meant, I turned back in my seat just in time to watch the front of the car smash through the metal barrier effortlessly, the only object between the road and the immediate drop into the ocean. Weightlessness took effect immediately and I plastered my hands to the ceiling in an effort to keep myself planted in my seat. The blood rushed to my head as everything went topsy-turvy. The urge to vomit was overwhelming but it was too late as I could only sit, rigid, as the churning blue waters of the Pacific raced up to meet the car.

The impact threw me against the steering column, shattering my ribcage and causing my broken bones to impale my lungs, my stomach, and my heart. I coughed a large mist of blood onto the inside of the windshield, only allowing me a second to scream out before the glass shattered from the brute force, granting cold ocean water to pour into the interior – a wall of white.

As the saltwater blistered my eyes and throat, the last thing that I heard was Vhen's evil laugh, doomed to ring in my ears.

* * *

"… _And now so are you."_

"… _I'm dreaming again."_

My breathing picked up to a quicker pace than normal, allowing me to be roused less violently than one would imagine. My eyes opened wide instantly, the surroundings of the room coming into focus within seconds. The chronometer on my night stand read that it was early in the morning, about an hour before my usual time to wake up.

 _This damn dream again_ , I groused as I rubbed my eyes, as if the action could wipe away the images that had etched themselves into my sleep. Same outcome, same players. Same old plot.

With an annoyed grunt, I rose out of bed, gently lifting the arm of the sleeping quarian away from my chest as I departed. Nya, her eyes closed behind her visor, emitted a sleepy whine as my warmth left her. She curled up into a fetal position underneath the thin sheets of the bed, more in response to being alone than being cold – her enviro-suit did a good job in trapping heat to warm her body anyway.

Nya's hood was the only thing that adorned her right now, apart from her suit. Everything else, her boots, her belts, the sheets of fabric that defined her image were all discarded so that Nya could sleep comfortably in the bed beside me, just the supple black material of her suit being all that separated her from me. She looked vulnerable without everything else on, thinner. Nya looked more streamlined this way – her quarian form perfectly outlined that it took little effort on my imagination to visualize her outside the suit.

God… just the mere notion of recalling her outside her suit never failed to awaken something in me, something that I have never felt with another partner before. Was this lust? Desire? Or some form of love so powerful and raw that it seemed to eat away at my heart? How did this quarian cause me to become such a hopeless romantic?

Before I could mentally wax on about the benefits of extraterrestrial love, I finally strode into the bathroom, almost tripping over Nya's boots, and turned on the water so that I could wash my face. Soaking a towel, I dabbed at myself and glanced at my reflection in the mirror. My short hair was all tussled from sleep, the shirt that I had chosen to don was slightly disheveled, and my beard looked a bit scraggly. All things that could be easily fixed after a shower, but I had not fully shaken off the effects from sleep, as evidenced when I tried to hold back a particularly strong yawn.

Enter the coffee.

Sneaking into the kitchen as not to disturb Nya's rest, I activated the coffee machine and was soon rewarded with a cup of a piping hot brew. Black, no cream. The rich scent of the coffee alone was leagues better than what any house chain could offer back in 2015. Apparently technology had caught up to the point where anyone could be their own barista if they were willing to drop a pittance for it. Now anyone could be a coffee snob.

I continued on with my morning rituals, depositing myself in front of the vidscreen, using the controls on my omni-tool to switch to a news channel and see what was up in the galaxy today. As usual, it was all junk – mostly recaps of late night talk-show punchlines or other assorted celebrity gossip. Flipping through channels in an effort to find something meaningful, I kept on getting just the bare minimum when it came to newsworthy stories.

Basically, everything was hunky-dory for the most part in the galaxy. Race relations were at an all-time high, the damage caused by the war was being swiftly repaired, the krogan were beginning to take a voice in politics, the humans and turians recently announced a new trade partnership, and so on and so forth. The mantra of reporting bad news for popularity seemed to have died out overnight when the war ended, with public opinion clamoring for more of these feel-good stories by the truckload. We as a society desired to feel good once more in the wake of so much loss and this was the attitude that had been reflected and picked up on by every facet in the media, government, and our day-to-day lives. Considering the current political climate, the citizens were getting so many of these sugary-sweet stories that it would be enough to rot their teeth.

Fed up with channel surfing, I finally settled on a station so that I could sit back and enjoy my coffee in relative comfort on my sofa. I waited until there was a lull in the conversation so that I could take a moment to stretch my limbs in preparation for my morning assault on the treadmill.

The apartment had been mine for as long as I could remember since arriving in this galaxy. It was not penthouse sized but nowhere was it near the level of a crappy studio apartment. It was a three-bedroom, two bathroom layout. One of the bedrooms was used for me and Nya, obviously, while another was for guests and the third I had converted to a rec room. The kitchen contained every appliance one might ever need for cooking, and the living room was substantial enough to allow space for a few activities. It even came with a balcony for gazing across the Citadel ward, lazily staring at the lanes of traffic darting in front of the stars.

Over the past few years I had taken the liberty of swapping out some of the more gaudy looking furniture for some pieces that resembled more refined and modern sensibilities. The couch that I was on now – black leather. The bed now had silk sheets. A few paintings depicting some modernistic splotches (clearly the artist had been a middle of a stroke) had been hung on full display for some added color. The bathroom had been remodeled with polished onyx forming the shower. Basically all my efforts had gone towards repairing the frankly hideous accoutrements that had adorned this apartment – my guess is that the original 2180s Sam was not in touch with his feng-shui, or had been provided any assistance from the feminine persuasion.

Speaking of said persuasion, Nya walked in from the bedroom, her gait slow and sleepy, and gently sat down next to me on the sofa. She had not added any of her usual accoutrements to her suit and she looked very cute in her rather bare form – very intimate from her perspective. She reclined into the leather cushions a bit, the material crinkling in protest, and scooted so that our bodies were leaning against the other, each a reassuring presence.

"I thought you were asleep," I noted out loud. I placed a hand on her thigh, making sure that some part of my body was always in contact with her. To touch a quarian in this manner was only reserved for lovers in their species – it only served to remind me that I alone had been provided this right, to see this woman in her most private and personal of moments.

I was one lucky son-of-a-bitch.

"Only half-asleep," Nya said as she placed a hand upon my limb, adding more heat. "I noticed right away when you had left."

"Sorry for waking you. I was trying not to disturb you."

Nya shook her head. "That doesn't matter. I was just worried about you that I figured that you could use some company this morning."

I blinked. "Huh? Why would you be worried about me?"

"Well… since we just came back from your father's funeral yesterday, I was wondering if you were doing all right."

Oh yeah. That. Truth be told I had not been thinking much about the funeral at all, having done everything in my power to seal that event off from being easily accessible in my mind. It held no power over me and yet I was surprised to discover how effectively that day had been cordoned off from my memory.

"Wasn't thinking about that," I said. "I'm actually not all that upset about yesterday."

Nya looked morose, like she was saddened and confused that I was not feeling any pain from the loss of my father. Was she wondering that I was broken? That I was experiencing a debilitating lack of emotion at a crucial time? Nya had barely known her family and the bonds between family in quarian culture were far more different that a normal human's perception. Quarian families could be fragmented, strained, but they never broke, never splintered from their clan.

"I loved my father," I assured her. "I remember him with only fondness. But here, I have nothing to draw from. His passing in this place is not why I'm… on edge this morning. I… I only think..."

"Were you having another one of your dreams?"

That caught my attention. Bemused, I looked at Nya to find her serious expression staring me down, almost like she was daring me to deny the claim. But the two of us both knew the other to the point where we could not get away with lying or evading certain questions that were important to our development as a duo. We could read each other like an open book.

Yet… there were still certain questions that had yet to be asked outright, but the less said on that, the better.

"You could tell?" I asked her, despite knowing the obvious.

The quarian nodded. "You were tossing and turning slightly in your sleep. You're never like that unless you're dreaming about something."

"Guess you've got me there."

"Was it the same dream? The one about you crashing your vehicle in the ocean?"

I scratched my chin thoughtfully, my eyes glazing over for a second. "It's been happening a lot more frequently these days. I'm always driving this car along a coastal road when suddenly, I'm distracted by people in the car – that bastard, Vhen, and some woman I don't recognize. The end result is always the same: the car crashes over the side and ends up in the ocean. That's when I always wake."

Nya gave a bitter sigh and began to run her fingers through my hair. Even though they were gloved, the gesture was still intimate enough that I closed my eyes in bliss, enjoying the feeling of her touch upon me.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

My lip curled in concentration, all the tension that had been wired tightly in my joints starting to loosen from Nya's soft massage. "To be honest, not really. It's been going on for so long that I'm not sure what to think at this point."

"You want to know what _I_ think?" she whispered tenderly, her helmet coming to within an inch of my face. Behind her mask, Nya gave a devilish smile and slowly swung her leg over me, pinning me down to the couch as she continued to rub my scalp tenderly.

"Mmm," I murmured contently as my hands found her prominent hips. "By all means, share."

"I think you need a vacation."

"A vacation?" I cracked one eye open. "Huh, I never considered that. But we just had a vacation anyway."

"To someone's _funeral_ ," Nya grumbled. "That doesn't count. I was thinking that we'd just leave for a few weeks and travel the galaxy together – someplace other than Earth." Jabbing insistently at my chest, she continued. "And that was the first time in months that you've actually taken time off to do anything but work. You – need – a – break, mister."

"Do I seem stressed out to you?"

Nya leaned back, her hands sensually beginning to caress my chest. Sucking in my breath from the slightly tickling sensations, I twitched slightly and tried to avoid my wife's proud stare.

"Stressed. Tense. You're all wound up. Are you going to continue arguing or shall I make more points to support my claim?"

"Ah, perish the thought." Closing my eyes again, I leaned back as I clasped Nya's hands. Her sitting on my lap with her fingers touching me did feel good, I had to admit. It was like her presence melted away all the frost that had permeated my bones from the night before, flooding me with the idea that a break from routine was actually sorely needed. "I don't know…" I said teasingly, my mind made up. "The hospital-,"

"You've got more than enough vacation time accrued," Nya reminded me with a stiff squeeze of her fingers upon mine. "And besides, Rie is more than capable of handling your workload."

Rie was my assistant at the hospital and another arthroscopic surgeon. She was a good friend to the both of us and we often hung out a lot with her and her boyfriend. Of course Nya was correct in inferring that Rie could pick up the slack in my absence as she was experienced enough to handle any challenges that came her way.

"And before you ask," Nya pressed, "I've got plenty of vacation time as well. C-Sec gives me two weeks per solar cycle."

"All right, all right!" I laughed, amused at the woman's dedication. "You've made your point that taking a vacation is a feasible option, but more important is the destination that you had in mind. That's the real answer – do you know where you would like to go?"

"I… hmm. Now that you mention it, I guess I've always wanted to visit-," Nya's train of thought broke off as a breaking story on the vidscreen was finally portraying something of interest, the sounds creating a distraction that ruined the playful moment between us. "Oh _Keelah_ , not again."

I too became hushed as the latest broadcast from the rebellious quarian Admiral Xen was being relayed across the channel. The muscles in Nya's arms hardened in anger and she leapt off my lap, nearly kneeing me in a sensitive place. I scooted closer to her so that I could restrain her from attacking the screen outright, holding onto her shoulders for support. The disgust of the news anchors was barely veiled as they had no choice but to watch the ramblings of a warmongering maniac. We chose to watch willingly but it was in rapt horror as we looked on at what not-so-subtle rhetoric that Xen was spouting up this time to give more so-called credibility to her "cause."

The reputation of Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh had been relatively unfamiliar to me until almost a year ago. During the Reaper War, she had built up a career of being a shrewd and manipulative leader, an expert in cyberwarfare and subterfuge. Xen headed the Special Projects arm of the quarian military and was responsible for the development of several anti-synthetic countermeasures during their campaign against the geth on Rannoch. Her actual stance for launching a campaign against the geth has remained cloudy to this day; but the general consensus from the rumor mill seems to have been that her level of support was marginal at best and in her mind the offensive was more of an opportunity to test out the weapons she had been developing in the interim. A quick read-through of her biography had struck me that Xen would easily sacrifice thousands of her fellow quarians if it meant that her ultimate goals were achieved.

Nothing was cut-and-dried with Xen. The ends always justified the means, even if thousands had to die to achieve those ends.

Such a hypothesis was certainly in line with what actions the admiral had recently accomplished and instigated. After all, what insanity would drive someone to initiate a conflict right after the most devastating war the galaxy had ever seen just ended? Maybe Xen was just more pragmatic than anyone could figure – it was the best time for someone to seize control now that every race's military effectiveness was at a critical low.

The Second Rannochian Civil War was not a popular war by any stretch of the means. Quite understandably, not one of the Council races were doing anything to assist either side of the conflict – from their standpoint, any outright warfare was deemed unacceptable and any participation whatsoever was to be heavily condemned and sanctioned. The civil war started when Xen and her Loyalist forces staged a relatively bloodless coup to overthrow the flotilla's Conclave and take control of all the quarians' military power by force. In Xen's eyes, the Conclave was headed in the wrong direction with their plans for reconstruction. Xen's idea was to use the remaining geth population, the ones not disabled during the war, and bring them back under quarian control to assist in the uplift process. The Conclave, cautious at the prospect of reactivating dormant geth as well as using them for servitude now that their messy history had come back to light, had blanched when this plan came up and quickly rejected it. Xen had been so sure about the success of her grand idea that she was willing to do anything necessary to make sure that it was carried out. Not one member of the Conclave, sadly, would have predicted that Xen would have resorted to violence to give her ideas substance.

And so on it went. The civil war on Rannoch was not proving to be a costly campaign… yet. For the time being, it had been made up of a few sparse clashes that left only a few dozen dead. The few remaining geth units that had not been rendered inert (by not possessing any Reaper upgrades) had obviously chosen to side against Xen, favoring their newfound freedom, but that only seemed to enrage the admiral more. Pundits were predicting that Xen was going to make a dramatic statement if her little "experiment" was going to continue flickering and waning like a dying candle. She had the force, but none of the charisma to back it up.

Ironically, Xen's actions had only served to further the gulf that the quarians had been steadily repairing between them and the other races of the galaxy. Many people were now reverting back to looking upon the quarians with scorn, as if they were silently chastising them from stupidly fighting during this period of healing. This was a viewpoint that many quarians understood – they hated the fighting the most. Many quarians had chosen to leave the flotilla entirely, immigrating to other planets or the Citadel just to escape the conflict. At least most people were sympathetic to the immigrants pouring into the docks day in and day out. They knew what it was like to run from a war before.

Such news never failed to send Nya into a rage, partly because she had once served under Xen during what appeared to be the admiral's most rational years and partly because she felt ashamed that her former commanding officer could betray her people out of pure greed. Quarians could be described many ways but _loyal_ was a trait so fiercely engrained into their mantra that it might as well be written in their DNA. They were devoted to their crews, steadfast to their morals, and unflinching with their love. To break that bond was considered… monstrous.

"And that's enough of that," I loudly said over the broadcast as I shut it off, leaving a blank screen. "We don't need that kind of negativity to start out the day, do we?"

"I just…" Nya was struggling not to say something about what we had just watched together, but she eventually realized there was no point in bringing it up because I was just going to agree with every word she said. Yet she still drew enough vitriol for one last outburst. "I hate that bitch. We just got back our homeworld and she's so focused on tearing it in two!"

"I know, honey," I gave her a one-armed hug. "I know. The funny thing is that I thought I had left all these idiots behind in the last century. I would think that a hundred plus years would instill a shred of intelligence into these people. But maybe I'm incorrectly attributing human characteristics to quarians. Maybe not everyone has figured everything out yet, even after winning a war."

"Even so," Nya protested, hands gesturing fruitlessly at the blank screen, "openly rebelling against our own people? You don't just get exiled for that, Xen is going to be _executed_ if she gets captured! It's been more than seventy years since the fleet has had to do that to a fellow fleetmate."

I bit my lip in consideration. "Does that upset you, knowing that your people will carry out their laws to the maximum effect towards someone who is, by no point of contention, a traitor?"

Nya turned back to me, eyes awash with a distant anger. "No."

As quickly as it had come, the rage faded. Nya's eyes seemed to clear, like she was waking up, and she slumped a little bit on the couch. In an effort to cheer her up, I tightened my hug around her, noting that her breathing was getting deeper and longer between inhalations. She was calming down.

"Look on the bright side," I said, "it's not a full-blown conflict. You still have a homeworld, and I hear that your tourism industry is booming at the moment."

"Rannoch tourists?" Nya was intrigued. "Why would they want to _visit_ at this time?"

"Are you kidding? Travelling to Rannoch is cheaper than ever. Word on the extranet is that the quarian embassy is still offering passes to Rannoch at a major discount. I remember that they used to run for 10,000 credits a pop. Now they're down to something like 2,000. The war may drive potentials away but the drop in cost is a boon to the miserly."

"I wonder if there's still a waitlist."

The quarians were notorious for being rather skittish around aliens for the last few centuries; expected as to the inherent danger from the foreign pathogens we carried around that could cause death for any quarian with a bad suit seal. Outsiders were not allowed onto their flotilla for any reason except for very special circumstances. With Rannoch, the quarians were cautious as to how their homeworld's ecosystem would react to the pathogens brought by non-native individuals, so they quickly imposed a pass system for any potential visitors.

The way it was set up was that anyone who was not a quarian or did not have a permanent residence on the flotilla to begin with had to sign up for the pass program through the quarian embassy on the Citadel. It involved the credit fee plus a background check in an effort to keep a thorough accounting of who visited their planet. Until their society could become more acclimated to receiving visitors who wished to step foot on their planet, the quarians were going to be using this system for a good long while.

Since there was nothing for us to watch – obviously due to the blank vidscreen – I took it upon myself to disengage from the couch first. I cracked my neck, getting a few of the kinks out before I announced that I was going to start on my morning treadmill run.

Before I did that, I halted in place as I took my wife's words to heart. A vacation did sound like a good idea. Aside from the funeral, my life had reached a kind of monotony to it – not that I was complaining, but the routine of getting up and going to work wears down on everyone eventually. It was peaceful, less chaotic than what my life had been a few years back, and as much as I relished it, I could not help but feel that I was sinking too much into tedium. Life's more than going to work and cashing a paycheck – there's an entire _galaxy_ out there and so many things to do than just work! People need time to recharge, clear their mind. After all, this could be the perfect opportunity to visit an exotic planet, check one more item off the bucket list so that I can put my former, less technologically-advanced life to shame.

Now, figuring out exactly where to go was still the question at hand. That could suffice for a bit more thought on the matter.

"Sam?" I heard Nya call out behind me.

"Yes, dear?"

The quarian uncrossed her legs as she too stood up from the couch. "I was just wondering… if you…"

"Yes?" I said again, arcing an eyebrow.

"I mean… it's today of all days that I…"

Where exactly was she going with this?

"Nya," I said gently. "Just say what you want to say. What, do you think I'm going to laugh at you or something like that?

A faltering noise came from Nya's throat as her windpipe momentarily closed up. "Never… never mind," she sighed. "We can talk about it later."

A frown graced my features. It was unusual for Nya to be evasive with her words like this. Did I say something wrong? For one of the few times that I had known her, I could not figure out what Nya was inferring. I know that I was probably reading too much into it, but I could not help but feel inadequate in that moment.

Why I felt that way was odd, but it was like I was letting this notion of failure slowly trickle out after being held back for a long time.

I was getting stressed out again, judging from the increased beating of my heart. I needed to get on that treadmill soon.

In the rec room, I switched the contraption to start slow for thirty seconds and then build to a steady running pace. I was not wearing proper gym attire, but the pajama shorts and tank top would suffice just fine for the activity level that I was going at.

The gravity on the Citadel was less intense than Earth's and as such, muscles tended to atrophy quicker the longer one remained on the station. Kind of hard to avoid if you lived here. As such, the need to exercise a bit more often was a routine that I worked in each morning. A couple miles on the treadmill each day would focus on my calves and occasional free weights would keep most of my other muscle systems in decent condition. I looked fine for my age; I was not overweight, I had a fair amount of definition in my torso muscles, and by all accounts I was an exemplary model of a healthy human.

Plus it was also gratifying having a loved one compliment your figure every so often. That was probably the only motivation I needed to embark upon these drills.

Unfortunately, I had only started to reach my peak speed on the treadmill when all of a sudden, my shoe pushed off from the rubber surface and never connected with the ground again. Frowning, I tried to keep my involuntary panic down as I suddenly became weightless, completely severed from the ground. Floating in place, my limbs waved frantically in the air as I instinctively tried to swim back down to the ground in something resembling a breast stroke. It was only after a few seconds of "swimming" did I realize that those kinds of actions were not going to do me any good here.

I heard faint giggling over by the doorway and I craned my head to spot Nya in the hall, her feet conversely on the ground from where she stood, her omni-tool open and connected to the apartment's systems.

"What the hell?" I muttered as everything slowly began to click. "God damn it, Nya. _Again?!_ "

Now Nya was laughing harder. "If your reactions weren't so amusing maybe I wouldn't cut the artificial gravity every now and then."

"Notice how amused I am," I said, my face conversely locked in a disapproving scowl. Truthfully, I was finding it hard not to break into a grin at seeing Nya laugh. "You're quite the comedian."

"What? Are you not enjoying yourself?"

"I'm finding it to be a little difficult," I grumbled as I was now helplessly turned upside down in the zero-g room. Thankfully, all of the exercising equipment was bolted down to the floor so there was no danger of a free weight spinning through the air and clobbering someone in the face. "Can you let me down now?"

"Hmm," Nya simpered as she crossed her arms, gazing at me wickedly. "I think not. You haven't said the magic words to me yet."

"Please?" I said with no small dose of sarcasm.

"Nope. Not what I was looking for."

"I love you?"

"I love you too, but you're still not there yet."

Of course I knew what she wanted me to say at this point, but my brain wanted to be difficult for a few more minutes instead of admitting defeat outright.

"How about… I will go down on you for as long you want tonight until you scream my name over and over again?"

"Oh?" Nya looked intrigued. "That's tempting, but still not the right words."

"Why you little…" I feigned being angry as I flailed about in mid-air. "When I get my hands on you…"

"Ooh, scary," Nya chuckled lowly, but she took a step forward and launched herself into the room with a careful push of her foot, giving up her right to gravity as she carefully met me in the center of the room. Our arms reached out and caught each other, allowing me to pull her in close and whisper those two words that she had been wanting to hear this whole time.

"Thank you," Nya whispered.

The two of us were one mass, our inertia causing us to lazily spin around in the middle of the rec room. Looking past myself and imparting onto the scene, everything was so hopelessly cheesy that I swore that Nya had to have been inspired to do this sort of stunt from a vid. She was always turning off the gravity at inopportune times just so that she could get in close and steal my body heat while we let no other forces weigh down on our shoulders.

She put so much effort into trying to be romantic with these little stunts that I could never find it in myself to be mad at her. Hell, it went above and beyond what most married couples did anyway. Another reason to be thankful.

Maybe the atmosphere was a little _too_ romantic because Nya's hands slowly were reaching towards the clasps on her visor, eager to discard it in the heat of the moment. She would have gone through with it too, had I not gently grasped her wrists.

"Someone's a little anxious," I noted out loud, ignoring the spinning sensations that were starting to give me a headache.

"I… I…" Nya tried to defend but could only manage a shaky laugh. "Just for a second? Please?"

"You know I normally wouldn't argue," I said, meaning every word. It was not like I got a chance to see Nya's face every day. It came with being a quarian – she had to remain in her sterile environment or else she could get deathly sick. Never mind the fact that she was in close proximity to me anyhow – we lived together and her immune system had long adapted to my germs by now. I had even paid extra for the apartment to have better filtration systems to minimize the risk of infection, but still it would not be enough. Nya would get sick every once in a while despite how cautious we were, and after one particularly disastrous week in which she had to remain bedridden due to a stray pathogen in the air, being cautious was all I could think about.

"My fever broke a week ago," Nya protested. "I'm fine."

"Yes, you're fine _now_ ," I indicated with a teasing poke to her sternum. "But if you take that visor off and you do end up getting sick-"

"But I _won't-_ "

" _Nya_ ," I said firmly, cutting her off. Once she fell silent, I maneuvered by body downward a bit so that I could slowly place a kiss on her throat, my lips planting themselves on the ribbed rubber covering. My wife sighed happily, encouraged at the contact on an intimate area. "If I could see your face all the time – if such a thing were possible – you know that I would take that chance. But we can't, and you need to stay safe as much as possible."

"I hate being safe," Nya pouted.

"I know. But we've already planned to make tonight special, remember? Why ruin the moment by offering a tease of what's to come right now? And, let's just say you do get sick if you expose yourself briefly, then all the preparation that we've done for tonight will have all been for nothing. Now, do you think you can wait until later today to show me what you're obviously keen to reveal?"

Nya nodded her head emphatically and all thoughts of inadequacy vanished from my head, along with my headache. "I… yes… yes, of course. I'm just… I'm just so excited, Sam and I want to make tonight special with you. And… well, that promise that you made just a few minutes ago still stands, I assume?"

"All that and more," I said, already visualizing the sequence of events in my head, followed by my brain attempting to quash the smutty thoughts before I could snap and end up taking Nya on our bed much earlier than anticipated.

Her omni-tool opened and Nya positioned a finger over a holographic button. "Ready for me to engage the gravity?"

I looked down and saw that our orientation had gradually positioned our feet almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Guess now was as good of a time as any.

I nodded to her and we dropped a foot to the ground a second later, our knees bending slightly to take the impact.

"Interesting way to start the day," I said in a bemused fashion, mockingly dusting myself off out of reflex.

"You're getting back to your exercises?" Nya asked.

"Just so long as you don't interrupt me again," I flashed a grin at her. "I've still got to get ready for work, speaking of which…" I reached out a hand and briefly intruded into one of Nya's pockets sewed onto her enviro-suit, withdrawing a silver object in the shape of a shield and gently adding the decoration to Nya's suit. "… _you_ need to get ready as well."

The C-Sec Patrol Division's coat of arms were displayed proudly upon the badge, a pair of wings spreading wide from the main insignia as if they were destined to rise above the regular rank and file – where my Nya had always aspired to be. Saying that she was one hell of a pilot was an understatement. I got to see her skills in action for myself during the war and I can attest in my own biased opinion that she was the best pilot that C-Sec had on the force today.

"You act like my job is glamourous every waking hour of the day," Nya snorted. "Barrel rolls, corkscrews, flying in those advanced maneuvers and such. It's all just paperwork most of the time. You've been watching too many vids."

"What?" I feigned shock. "You're telling me that you don't spend your days out in your shuttle, bringing down bad guys and looking pretty for the cameras?"

"' _Pretty for the cameras?_ '" Nya laughed in disbelief. "Now I _know_ you've been watching too many vids. Besides, even if that were true, they'd never put _me_ in front of the cameras."

"And why the hell don't you think so?"

Nya blinked. "I mean… look, Sam. I'm a quarian. Enviro-suit and such? I don't really have that much sex appeal for the teenagers that watch those cop shows on the net."

"I don't know," I cupped my chin as I gave Nya a once-over, making sure to stare quite obnoxiously at where her suit curved in the right places. " _I'd_ certainly have sex with you."

"You idiot," Nya sighed as she aimed a playful roundhouse at my face, which I easily ducked. "That's not the point I'm trying to make here!"

"Keep talking like that and I'll be sure to make a few points of my own," I waggled my eyebrows mischievously.

Nya shook her head in exasperation and began shoving me back toward the treadmill – a rather difficult endeavor with the both of us laughing heartedly. I was still staring at Nya the entire time, making a point to widen my eyes to make it look like I was staring rather hard at places it would definitely be considered inappropriate to glance at in public. It was not difficult for Nya to pick up on where my gaze was directed and that only made her push me back into the rec room harder before she could lose control of the incredible self-restraint she had imposed on herself just a minute ago.

"Get back to your exercises, you unbearable human!"

* * *

Two hours later – Citadel Huerta Memorial Hospital

The operating room was sufficiently freezing, as always. I realize that the cold is designed to facilitate a more alert state in the doctors performing their various procedures, but as someone who prefers a typically milder climate, I hated it. Damn our useless human bodies for reacting to temperatures in such preprogrammed manners.

At least there was some soothing music in the background that gave me a distant point to focus upon.

There were four of us in the room at the moment. Five if you counted the human patient who was lying face down on the specialized (and cushioned) bench, unconscious. The anesthesiologist was monitoring the patient's level of awareness, making sure that he would not suddenly wake and be privy to the goings-on during his surgery. I have never had that happen to me before but many of my peers say that such an event, when it does happen, is frightening for both the patient and the doctors.

No wonder so many of us become alcoholics.

The jumpsuit that I was wearing was doing an admirable job in staving off the worst of the cold, but it came at the expense of me looking like a dork. I never figured out why but apparently the universal dress code for all medical professionals in this galaxy was to wear a form-fitting bodysuit that hugged every square inch of our skin tightly. Apparently it was to facilitate loss of nerves and keep our bodies consigned and stable. It tended to ride up in the crotch area a bit too, but I probably should not touch on that too much.

If the bodysuit was not causing any fashion alarms to go off, then perhaps the eyepiece that was affixed to my head would. The electronic gizmo was fastened around my ear and a clear piece of electric blue glass in front of my right eye wirelessly fed me data on the patient in perfect clarity, giving me an unobstructed and instantaneous view of the vitals at hand: blood pressure, oxygen levels, brain activity. I may look ridiculous right now but it was worth it at the expense of such important knowledge.

One of the nurses hovered in the background, only there to provide additional support should the need arise. I did not think that we would need the help anyway, Rie and I had this sort of thing down pat. After fifteen successful surgeries together, I would say that the two of us made a pretty damn good team. We had been working long enough that the trust we placed in the other was well-founded.

Riena, or Rie as she liked to be called by her friends, was screwing up her eyes in concentration as she carefully cauterized a torn tendon in the human's elbow with a laser scalpel. The site had been sterilized, cleared of blood, and the inside of the man's arm looked like something you would find out of an anatomy textbook. Pink muscle, yellow tendons, the slight white pulp of a fat deposit. I watched every move that Rie made, but her astonishingly steady hands very quickly dispelled any minute doubts that she would get the job done. Hell, I was mostly taking bets with myself on how quickly she would be able to complete the surgery.

Guess I owed myself a hundred credits; this was a new record for her.

Rie, for lack of a better word, was my protégé of sorts. Technically her official job designation was listed as a doctor's assistant, but she had already obtained her doctorate at Cambridge just a few years ago so the prefix 'Doctor' was attributable to her. Due to the location of her schooling, Rie tended to speak with a slight British accent, the effects interesting overall mostly in part to the fact that Rie was a turian.

She stood half a head taller than me, hazy yellow eyes punctuated by dark black slits. White face paint marked her features, two lines running across her eyes and thick strokes upon her mandibles. Rie looked distinctively less avian than the males of her species, as her crest and mandibles were distinctly less pronounced and more rounded. It looked like she always had this sly sort of smile on her face, like she always knew what dirty secrets you were keeping from her and how she could use such information to her advantage. Fortunately, Rie was nowhere near that sadistic as she may seem because I considered her to be one of the friendliest turians that I had ever met.

Apparently many people found the qualities of turian females rather attractive, which meant that I would be the one subject to deflect and beat down any unprofessional queries from colleagues referring to Rie's relationship status (which her social media pages clearly outline front and center that she was taken). This was a constant occurrence and it would only end with me making the same comment that Rie was already engaged, to an ex-human marine named Chandler (another good friend), and thus had no time to deal with other silly people.

I had met Rie over a year ago in this very hospital – bumping into each other quite by circumstance. I had been on one of my breaks, grabbing a wrapped snack filled with carbs from a vending machine. As I had been walking back toward my office, I noticed this female turian get rudely rebuffed from one of the surgeons, nearly chasing him into the OR – near tears. She had been pleading for an interview with this hospital for months, according to her, but no one in the building was going to give her the time of day. Intrigued, a bit of white knight peering through me, I had approached the turian, asked her for her name, and invited her in my office for an informal chat.

After a quick read-through of her resume, I was surprised that more people were not snatching Rie up to work for them, except that I knew that the current job market for new doctors was relatively overcrowded right now and no one was hiring. Yet I _worked_ for this hospital, already had a residency under my belt, and it had occurred to me that I had not picked up anyone to train under my wing yet, despite the length of time that I had been here. After all, arthroscopy was not considered to be the most glamorous of the surgical arts, nor the most challenging. We repaired limbs, yes, but nowhere was our work close to life-saving. Add to the fact that most of the staff jokingly referred to me as the "Old Man" due to my refusal to use surgical machines for any operation, and you can see why the ribbing would arise now and then.

Well, excuse me for being a bit different! I had tried the machines early in my career here before, and they worked fine, it was just that I was inherently more familiar using the tools in my own hands rather than trusting a machine to do my job. Blame 2015 for being so comparatively primitive.

Using our hands, _pah!_ Whoever heard of such a thing?

In any case, Rie had the experience for the basics of the job at hand as Cambridge has one of the most elaborate medical training programs on Earth (perhaps in the galaxy) and during our initial conversation, it became immediately clear that I was talking with an immensely talented individual full of knowledge and a desire to learn that I realized that I had to have her on my team. I had never hired anyone before nor given an official interview, but it felt right granting her a job on the spot. Just few signatures on a tablet later and Rie was officially an employee of Huerta Memorial Hospital's arthroscopy team.

Rie had given me a gigantic hug then and there. Yet another example giving my life meaning, despite my early objections to the contrary.

Ever since that day we had been fast friends. Rie had taken to the work very quickly and I appreciated having a fellow individual to talk shop with every day. As much as I love Nya, she could never get into the gritty details of this job the way Rie could, but then again, I would always struggle to follow along whenever Nya's conversations dealt with the inner mechanics of spaceship engines and other assorted statistics. I did well in school but nowhere did I ever have to deal with such complex concepts of avionics, spacecraft structures, and astrodynamics. With Rie, at least she would get all of the terrible doctor puns I was prone to make.

"Aaaand… done," Rie said with finality as she pulled away from the repair site, the flanging effect in her voice becoming slightly more apparent from her pride.

I came over with a light and leaned over to inspect Rie's work. I did not see why I should have been worried at all. Flawless work, one could hardly notice the stitched up tear in the tendon. Maybe next time the unconscious human would learn not to attempt to lift full beer kegs over his head while heavily intoxicated in an effort to impress members of the opposite sex.

Well, his stupidity was paying my bills so maybe I had no right to judge.

"Textbook right there," I said. "Go ahead and sew him back up."

"Sure thing, Sam," Rie's mandibles twitched in response to the praise. "Now can you please turn that dreadful music off?"

"' _Dreadful?_ '" I repeated in mock horror, gesturing to the speaker where the soothing orchestral tones were wafting from. "The hell you say! This is _Tchaikovsky_ – one of the all-time masters! You're telling me that you think _Marche Slave_ is dreadful?"

"Eeh," Rie shrugged as she finished cauterizing the entry site. "Not really my thing. If it didn't mess with our nerves I could stand to have some dance music in here – or at least some turian marches."

"I've heard your turian marches. They're nothing but a bunch of screeching war cries that are partially drowned out by the obnoxious drums your species loves so much."

"What's wrong with that? That's good music."

"No, it is not," I shook my head emphatically. "That's hardly music at all. This – Tchaikovsky – is what all music should inspire to be. This has texture, it has color, it uses all the elements of an orchestra to blend together into one seamless whole. That is interesting – that is true music."

"Hm," Rie considered, but she wasn't won over. She gave final glance at her work, nodded at the nurse to wheel the patient out once she had deemed it acceptable, then began stripping off her gloves. "You ever try to catch this guy in concert?"

I was organizing tools and had not properly heard the question. "Who?"

"Tchai-something-or-other. The guy you were talking about."

"Oh," I began laughing. "I'm never going to see Tchaikovsky in concert. The guy's been dead for a long time."

"How long?" Rie asked.

"Give or take three centuries."

Rie's jaw dropped a few inches. "You're telling me that this guy composed this music _three centuries_ ago? Without the aid of any music software whatsoever?"

" _Now_ you understand why he is considered one of the masters," I smirked. "The man was a genius, plain and simple."

Meanwhile, the turian was shaking her head. "I… I never knew. I just assumed that he was using a program to map out the music he wanted to compose."

"Nope. Just old-fashioned pen and paper."

"Huh," Rie muttered, dumbstruck for the day. Maybe there was hope for her after all.

I walked over to the sink and began setting the tools aside to be washed. "You can go inform the young man's family about our progress," I jerked my head back to the door. "I'll stay here and clean up."

"You sure?" Rie clarified.

I waggled a finger. "Don't think that you're going to be getting out of your duties so easily. We still have all this documentation to run through."

"Wonderful," Rie sighed. "I love paperwork." She tugged at the collar of her medical jumpsuit and let out a sigh before she turned to me. "Everything's still on for tonight?"

"Oh yeah," I grinned. "I still haven't told Nya the plans for this evening."

"She thinks she's just going to spend the night in?"

"Well…" I said sheepishly, "that's what we _will_ do eventually, but I-,"

"Never mind," Rie held up her hands, cutting me off. "I don't want to hear it."

* * *

" _Shuttle One-Mary-Twenty-Three, please advise current situation and heading. Over."_

"Respond to that for me," Nya snapped at her co-pilot as her hands blurred away at the shuttle's control panel. Unfelt, the UT-47 Kodiak shuttle, decked out in the traditional C-Sec blue and white, snaked expertly through the service tunnels, narrowly managing to avoid smashing into the wall, walkways, or any other obstruction that could possibly ruin their day. These sort of maneuvers would generally produce some sort of uncomfortable g-forces but the lack of any effects on their bodies meant that the inertia dampeners were working perfectly.

Nya's fellow turian officer touched a control, his face panicked between glances at what Nya was doing to the craft and trying to formulate the thoughts in his head into a coherent sentence. "This… this is One-Mary-Twenty-Three, dispatch," he managed to blurt out into his radio. "We are currently running an intercept course on our marks. Projected line of sight in eighteen seconds."

" _Acknowledged_ ," the person on the other line spoke calmly. " _Be advised. Target craft is now over the Presidium. Use of on-board weapons is prohibited due to potential collateral damage."_

"Damn it!" the turian slapped at the dashboard. "How the hell are we going to stop these guys?"

 _I have an idea, but you may not like it_ , Nya thought grimly.

Tilting the shuttle gradually to the right, the Kodiak streamed out of the access tunnel, screaming across the lake of the Presidium and sending up plumes of spray from its wake. Above them, the bright yellow skycar was easy to spot due to its color and the fact that the occupants inside were firing their guns wildly in all directions.

In a break from her routine, Nya had to concede that the day at her job had already gotten off to a poor start. She had barely spent half an hour at her desk, rummaging through her mailing list, when dispatch had gotten on the horn about a hold up at one of the Sirta outlets – Nya's precinct. Officers on duty had reported being pinned down by gunfire while four criminals – all human - had fled to their escape vehicle, having hacked their way in to a substantial amount of credits.

Once word of the crooks using a vehicle to flee with their haul had been reported, the station had given the official scramble alert to all Patrol crews, meaning that it was now Nya's turn to stop the bad guys. Three shuttles had lifted off from their station with reports of additional backup incoming from the lower Wards. So far, Nya's shuttle was the first one on site as it matched the skycar's altitude, but with the weapons restrictions in effect, shooting the ship down was not a viable option.

 _Damn it, Sam_ , Nya thought. _You're never going to let me live this down._

"Any ideas?" the copilot asked as he began to grip his armrests for support. The criminals had noticed that they had the cops on their tail and had opened fire on it. Pings were resounding throughout the hull of the shuttle but the craft itself was heavily armored. It was going to take more than a pistol to punch through the hull but Nya was not assuaged by that. Getting shot at is an unnerving experience in any case.

"Scan ahead for a safe zone," Nya said. "Find me a place to shoot these guys down without any civilians getting in the way."

The turian tapped away at the console before uttering a defeated sigh. "It's no use. These guys are just running in circles. They must have figured out that we can't shoot them down in heavily populated areas."

"Dispatch, what are our options?" Nya yelled.

" _Target ship is still flying too erratically to risk weapons discharge. A Mantis gunship equipped with electromagnetic rounds is en route to disable the skycar. Also be advised, reports from the ground units indicate that the subject are likely under the effects of a hallucinogenic compound – any attempts at detainment will most likely be met with heavy resistance."_

"Oh great," Nya's copilot groaned. "Now they're telling us that these guys are high?"

This was a bad sign. People under the effects of drugs lacked the cognitive abilities to make intelligent decisions first and foremost. Side effects could range from increased adrenaline that limited the pain receptors, hallucinating images, or the activation of latent biotic abilities in specific individuals. No wonder these guys were acting so erratic.

"How long until that Mantis arrives?" Nya asked.

" _Current trajectory places the ETA at two point three minutes."_

"Too long," Nya gritted her teeth, maneuvering the shuttle to avoid drifting into the main transit lanes. "Someone's going to get seriously hurt if we keep this up for much longer."

Up ahead, one of the wobbling skycar's doors opened and a human male, thin with a shaved head, an elaborate purple pattern covering his face, stuck his entire upper torso out the side, a shotgun clenched in one hand. The human tried to level the weapon at Nya's shuttle but the wind plus their speed meant that his aim was going all over the place, not to mention that the impaired pilot of the skycar was finding it hard to fly in a straight line. Still, when Nya saw the blast of flame erupt from the shotgun, her heart gave a jolt and she jerked the shuttle to the left, out of the human's line of sight.

"Aw spirits," the turian beside her groaned. "You saw the tattoo on his face? He's a damn _cultist_."

"Yeah… I did," Nya sighed.

She had not gotten a good look at the pattern that had been permanently inked onto the man's features, but Nya had seen enough cases with the same distinguishing mark to know that such a symbol meant trouble. The purple color always gave it away.

The end of the war had not brought complete peace on the galaxy as many would have predicted. While many of the major conflicts ended almost overnight, there existed some individuals who believed that the Reapers were the actual saviors of the galaxy and that they had been made into martyrs through their destruction. Within months, the gang calling themselves the Ascendant had quickly become a nuisance for the Citadel's inhabitants. They took to tattooing patterns of the Reapers on their faces, brutalizing random individuals on the street, and generally causing mayhem and havoc wherever they went. The Ascendant cultists were a societal plague and all of the Council races were quick to condemn the actions of the group.

But for every crazed individual that was put behind bars or killed, more seemed to just spring up out of the woodwork and resume operations as normal. It drove Nya absolutely nuts to deal with these guys on a weekly basis.

The skycar's driver seemed to get the idea that he wasn't going to shake his pursuer quite so easily and stupidly decided that he wanted to make things a bit more interesting. The craft shot down to the lake, barely skimming a few feet above the shimmering surface. It weaved from side to side, as if daring Nya to take the bait and follow him on a destructive game of cat-and-mouse.

Unfortunately for the crook, he had no idea what kind of a pilot he was dealing with and Nya smiled as she realized that her mark had made a fatal mistake.

"I'd brace for impact if I were you," Nya announced as she sent a boost of power to the Kodiak's engines, causing it to surge forward slightly.

The turian's eyes widened and he emitted a quiet " _Fuck!_ " as he realized what Nya was about to do.

Now the Kodiak was positioned above the skycar, trapping it between her and the lake. Nya killed her vertical boosters by half and the shuttle dropped down so that its underside was only two meters away from the skycar's roof. The criminals, sensing that this position was not ideal for them, began to edge their ship to the side so that they could get out of Nya's shadow and regain altitude to make it back to uncontested airspace.

Which was exactly what Nya had been hoping would happen.

Viciously, Nya activated the jets on the Kodiak's roof and the shuttle shot down to the ground, the undercarriage violently slamming against the top of the skycar's engine with a heavy crunch. The impact caused the skycar to tilt upward suddenly, and it quickly started to arc in a lazy circle, smoke pouring from the back. The craft itself was sluggish and losing altitude as its pilot fought the controls. It would prove to be a useless effort as the skycar finally had its engine cut out and it landed with a heavy bang in one of the many parks lining the waterfront, tearing gouges in the grass and throwing up dirt and debris while it skidded. The area had been cleared of pedestrians who had been wise enough to stay out of the way, thankfully.

"Target vehicle down," the turian radioed in. "Repeat, target vehicle down at the fifth precinct, Presidium."

" _Roger that_ ," the radio squawked. " _Remain on site for detainment. Backup will be there momentarily_."

Seconds later, the Kodiak landed on the ground a few dozen feet away from where the skycar had crashed. The engines whined as they were put into standby and the copilot removed his safety belts so that he could maneuver into the tiny cabin. Levelling his service weapon, he took a breath to prepare himself before he hit the switch to open the shuttle doors.

And then a whole mess of things happened all at once.

There was a harsh bang as Nya recognized the telltale sound of a mass accelerator weapon, as did her copilot who dived out of the way just in time to avoid being turned into swiss cheese. Bullets pockmarked the door on the opposite side of the craft as they surged through the cabin, the harsh pinging sounds threatening to deafen the two of them.

Nya twisted around in her seat, pistol in hand from her holster, but found that her safety belt was jammed and pinning her to the seat. Fighting not to let panic overwhelm her, she tugged at the belt calmly and struggled to undo the straps keeping her tightly in place. Eventually she gave up for the moment and focused on providing cover fire for her fellow officer, her position fortuitously giving her a good angle at the carnage outside.

Even from this distance, Nya could see that one of the cultists was already dead, slumped in one of the skycar's rear seats with blood streaming down his face. He must not have been wearing his restraints and was killed during the crash, she reasoned. The neighboring passenger, conversely, was still alive and working to extricate himself from the wreck. Nya grunted as she tried to line her pistol up but her first shot missed, the blast echoing uncomfortably in her ears.

The cultist whirled around as the bullet shot by his head. Even in this chaos, the human managed to lock eyes with the quarian through her blood-red visor. The purple tattoo on the man's face seemed to undulate and become alive; his eyes blazed with a touch of the unknown as he fought to remember this moment through all of the drugs swimming through his system. Scratching at a sore on his unshaven face, the human took a shaky breath and ducked down behind the skycar and Nya realized that he was now heading for the elevator banks, rapidly maneuvering out of her line of fire.

Nya cursed, lamenting that one had escaped. She returned to fighting with her belt, noticing that the plastic tooth locking the contraption in place had bent, preventing her from freeing herself normally. Her thoughts drifted to using the knife at her waist to cut herself free but she was forced to ignore it as the gunfire reports grew closer.

A bullet hit the door near Nya's copilot, sending up sparks, and he recoiled but managed to return fire for that little transgression. A rumble of approval shook up the turian's throat as a sound that Nya recognized was of pleasure.

"One down!" the copilot crowed.

"Fan…Fantastic," Nya shakily breathed, fingers now weakly tugging some more at her belt in a useless manner. "Was that all of them?"

Before the turian could respond, a small cylindrical object clattered and rolled its way into the shuttle interior. The two of them barely had time to cry out as the flashbang detonated, filling their eyes with a magnificent burst of luminescence, searing heat from the magnesium striker, and a harsh ringing noise that overwhelmed their ears. Nya clenched her eyes shut as spots danced across her vision and let out a frustrated scream, drawing her body into a ball as best she could.

Nya's mind was awash in a fury as she tried to make sense of the situation before it was too late. Her mind pivoted and settled in to the perspective of her enemy. If it were her, she would have used the flashbang to disorient her enemies if they were located in a fortifiable position. Once they were disoriented, she could use the distraction to close the gap between them and insert herself behind cover and render their defenses useless. Only then would she be able to overwhelm the opposing force and take the position for herself. Nya had been thinking so hard about the possible outcome of the encounter that she was not at all surprised when she felt the chassis vibrate subtly from the footfalls of an individual.

Despite knowing what would happen, fear threatened to strangle Nya on the spot. _Keelah, he's in this shuttle with me. He's right there!_

Still struggling to see past her ruined vision, Nya lifted her pistol at the same time a frightful, snarling face peered through the frothing glow that had begun to boil away at the edges of her eyes. She roared at the same time she clenched down on the trigger frantically, the recoil barely bucking the gun upward in her death grip. There was a moment of tranquility that vanished as soon as Nya felt a hot liquid splatter against her visor and enviro-suit, followed by a muffled thump of a falling body. Nya wiped away her visor and was dumbstruck when she could see that her palm was colored bright red. Only then did she look down at herself.

She was completely covered in blood. It had coated her torso and dripped off her in rivulets. Horrified, Nya could only dumbly gaze at herself and the disastrous change that had transpired to her wardrobe. The effects of the flashbang were mostly gone and Nya could see the limp body of the cultist lying prone on the floor of the shuttle, a huge pool of blood spreading from his head.

"I…" she fought to keep the words from tumbling out in a tangled mess, "…need… a vacation."

Shaking free the paralytic effect on her limbs, Nya plucked her knife from its sheath and sliced through her safety belt effortlessly. Lifting herself out of her seat, knees aching, she was helped out of the shuttle by her copilot. She tried not to look at the corpse as she left.

The two officers found a bench and sat themselves upon it. The turian was nursing a scratch under his eye and Nya looked like she had waded through a slaughterhouse. They just sat in silence, ignoring the plumes of smoke wafting over them and the annoying trill of sirens cutting through the air. They sighed as they gazed up at the trees and the tranquil lake as everything began to return to normal, Nya's exhaustion beginning to take hold and threating to have her keel over on the spot, the myopia encroaching. She slumped in the bench, reclining in relief and emitted a gigantic sigh as she focused on keeping herself calm, managing to miraculously stave off the shock that would have consumed a lesser being.

As additional C-Sec shuttles began to land at the site, the turian gently put his hand on Nya's arm – a sign of comradeship and respect – before he stood to greet the new arrivals.

"Happy birthday," he mumbled to Nya almost as an afterthought.

* * *

 **A/N: One more chapter of fluff is all you people get before I start to tap into my dark side. If you thought that I was going to go easy on Sam and Nya this time... think again.**

 **Segueing a bit, as a soundtrack junkie, I tend to utilize a lot of music when constructing these chapters. It helps to put everything in perspective during writing and visualizing these scenes so I thought I might share a few pieces of music that I think go very well with the chapters. If you'd rather me not include these music recommendations after every chapter, just say so and I'll shut up.**

 **\- Progeny Intro (Sam's Theme): "I Live (Electronic Version)" by Brian Tuey/Jack Wall from the VG _Call of Duty: Black Ops III_. Personally, I'm finding that a traditional orchestral soundscape is not appropriate to define this story as I consider Sam and his thoughts to be more chaotic - thus there will be a lot of ambient tracks to describe and define his thought process. **

**\- Nya's Police Chase: "The Only Way Out of This" by Hans Zimmer and Andrew Kawczynski from the movie _Chappie_. Case in point, another electronic track - this time with a bit more oomph to it. I'm quite partial to the driving tempo and those swerving synth tones in the middle - figured that it would be good to go with a chase scene.**


	3. Chapter 3: Best Wishes

The monotonous tapping of fingers on glass keyboards filled the still air, comparatively loud due to the fact that the two of us were pretty much encased in a vacuum. I don't know what it was about the doors in this universe but they are remarkably effective at being soundproof. Hell, I could almost hear the blood pounding in my ears for it was so quiet. Either that or it was this stupid medical jumpsuit tightly restricting all blood flow to my limbs that was causing my circulation to be more pronounced.

Rie and I were at our desks in our office – we shared a room with a large glass window that overlooked the lush green parks of the Presidium. At least we had a nice view as part of our tenancy. The hospital office itself was just as sterile as one could imagine: two desks positioned on opposite sides of the wall in a neutral light color, a pair of chairs positioned in front of the desks for visitors to plop themselves in, drab filing cabinets, and our personal consoles.

There were little in the way of our personal possessions helping to stamp our impressions over the place, save for our laminated medical degrees upon the walls and a bowl of candies on Rie's desk for her to snack on every once in a while. Apparently she was a sucker for turian chocolate. The Swiss had to be making a killing by adding dextro confections to their _carte du jour_. Know your market, I suppose.

My eyes were glazing over as I filled out line after line on my daily reports. One would think that there would be an easy way to automate all these metrics – just program a simple macro on a spreadsheet, input a few formulas here and there and it would all be easy! Unfortunately, for some stupid reason, this universe did not seem to possess the equivalent of Excel and thus everything had all taken a step backwards when it came to inputting data. At least I could pick up software suites quickly but my god, this was mind numbing. Add to the fact that my skills as a typist had atrophied slightly due to these damn keyboards possessing no physical keys – it was just a glass slab that acted as a touchpad for holographic keys. Are there no appliances with any sort of tactile feedback left anymore? How am I supposed to know where my fingers are landing if I cannot feel the difference between the keys?

Relatively minor annoyances aside, I was able to finish my paperwork without having to bang my head on my desk in response to the operating system locking up (which it often did). Rie was still working on her surgery recaps, her yellow eyes glued solidly to the screen.

I leaned back in my chair and stretched my limbs, working out the stiffness that had accumulated from me sitting in a chair for about a couple hours. Now that I had some free time before I had to go to the next checkup, I decided to make the most of it to escape being bored at work.

From the top drawer in my file cabinet, I withdrew what looked like a toy pistol, small and metallic looking. In essence, it _was_ a toy pistol as its overall purpose was to facilitate mindless and relatively harmless targeting exercises. Connecting it with an app on my omni-tool, I raised the pistol as I saw a holographic target appear on the far wall, bright blue and glowing, daring me to take my literal best shot.

With a smirk, I lined the pistol up with my dominant eye and pulled the trigger, which had been calibrated to simulate the exact weight of pulling the trigger on an actual pistol that shot bullets. This pistol just fired an invisible laser that the holographic target could register and indicate the location of my aim. No boom, no flash, just a simple pull and that was it. A red dot appeared near the center of the target with a faint _blip_ – not a bulls-eye, but pretty damn close.

A faint chuckle left my throat, pleased at my aim so far. The target then disappeared only to reappear in another location, this time on the upper right hand side of the window. Wanting to test my speed, I quickly aimed the pistol and let off a shot without me fully aiming down the sights yet. The target beeped as it registered a hit but it was indicating that the "bullet" had only barely made it inside the circular mark.

Still, that was not so disappointing. A few years ago I could not have hit the broad side of a barn with a machine gun so the fact that I could at least hit a couple targets with a small pistol was a marked improvement in a way.

The application now caused a new target to appear inside the room, this time right over Rie's head. Giving a measured raise of my eyebrow, imagining the parallels between this and the William Tell story were not all that far off, except that I had no chance of hurting anyone. I made a point to gently ease my aim above the turian's head so that I would not "shoot" her in the back of the cranium – she would be annoyed with me otherwise if I did that.

A trigger pull later and a _blip_ resounded. A bulls-eye at last. Not bad for someone who once professed to be the worst shot in the galaxy.

Rie turned in her chair, giving me a look of pure exasperation. "Do you really have to do this every day?" she inquired.

"Do what?" I asked innocently.

The turian did not look to be in the mood for my feigned ignorance (even though their race mostly looked grumpy in my opinion – their lack of as many facial muscles as humans possess might play a part in that aspect).

"I'm not going to say it. You know what you're doing."

"Am I not allowed to practice my shooting indoors?"

"They have ranges for this sort of thing, you know."

"Well, what if I turn off the volume? Will that help with the distractions?"

Rie's eyes narrowed. "It's more hearing you constantly turn around in your chair and making those noises of victory every time you hit the damn target. It gets old after a while."

"Hmm," I mused as I scratched my cheek with the barrel of the pistol. "It's really that obnoxious?"

"It really is."

" _Fine_ … fine…"

I made a show of dramatically depositing the pistol back into the drawer, digging around for a second to withdraw my father's pipe in exchange. I bit down on the polished mouthpiece, cupping the smooth wood of the bowl as I made a face around my clenched jaw to express my pretend displeasure.

Rie did not look amused. "What is that?" she pointed at my pipe.

"This?" I wiggled the pipe. "I guess you could say it is my inheritance from my late father. Please don't offer any condolences," I blurted as I saw Rie's mouth open slightly. "I've had to endure enough of them during the funeral already."

"I didn't know that you smoked."

"I don't," I said. "Not anymore. I quit during the war."

The turian squinted as she tilted her head. "So now you're just putting an empty pipe in your mouth and chewing on it?"

"Indulge me in my little tics," I scowled, but playing up my annoyance. "There are just some habits that I can't seem kick. Besides, this is harmless and it kind of calms me down in a way."

"Well, it's better than shooting targets above my head all the time," Rie shrugged. "Smoking, or pretend smoking in your case, is a lot less quiet than hearing ' _blip… blip…_ ' followed by your low whispers of ' _Yes._..'"

I gave a short laugh. "Yeah, well, you lose a hand while in a life or death scenario and you'd suddenly see the benefit of being even the tiniest bit prepared for whatever occasion. It certainly would have helped _me_ out a bunch had I taken some shooting lessons beforehand and I wouldn't have had my ass to need saving all the time. Horrific injuries put things into perspective."

Rie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, her mandibles twitching in what I could guess had to be amusement. Turian expressions were difficult to read sometimes as they had no lips to manipulate into easily discernable emotions. Their body language was also rather subdued which meant that I had an easier time deciphering _Nya's_ moods than I did Rie's – and _her_ face was obscured most of the time.

Maybe that was because I was _married_ to Nya that I was able to understand her better, but my point still stands in theory.

"As my boss," Rie countered after a quiet simper, "you facilitating these constant interruptions and annoyances could be grounds for a hostile workplace environment claim."

"Oh _really?_ " I bit down on my pipe as my features slackened into incredulity. "You're going to pull _that_ on me?"

"Just saying," the turian gave a meager shrug of her shoulders but the positioning of her eyelids told me that she was merely messing with me.

"I gave you a job!" I pointed out, wanting to make sure that I won this faux argument.

"Of which I am certainly grateful."

My laughter of disbelief nearly overpowered me in my chair to the point that I started to slap my knee. Even Rie got a few chuckles in as well.

"Rie," I shook my head. "How long are you going to keep this charade up? Our current employee rapport cannot possibly be characterized as hostile based on the empirical evidence alone."

Rie rubbed at her chin thoughtfully as her mandibles twitched once in anticipation. "I'm not sure. I could file a claim simply to annoy you and retract it afterward just to give you more paperwork."

"So you'd _prank_ me in that regard?"

"The hospital made the rules," Rie chuckled. "They have to go through every claim filed in order and both sides have to submit their arguments and reasoning."

"You invite Nya and me over to your place every month for dinner of your own volition!" I faked being outraged. "Giving me additional paperwork to fill out as a joke is just cruel and unusual."

"It would be funny for me, though. Consider it my petty revenge upon my boss for slightly annoying me every now and then."

"For that matter," I pointed out, "I'm not really your 'boss,' per se. I'm more of a similarly-aged colleague that just happens to train you."

"And who gave me a job."

"Yes, that too."

"So… kind of like being a boss? That means the paperwork still flows upward to you, right?"

I buried my face in my hands. "God's sake…" I muttered. "You're worse than my wife sometimes."

Rie's head swung over to look out towards the hall. "You mean your wife that's standing at the door right now?"

"Wha-?"

Without giving me any more time to process Rie's words, the door slid open and, sure enough, Nya walked in with her purposeful gait. However, Nya seemed a little shaken up and that was probably due to the reddish discoloration that had permeated itself to her enviro-suit, parts of her hood, and her helmet. She seemed vaguely unfocused and fumbled at the chair in front of my desk before she sat down with a grateful sigh. Meanwhile, Rie and I could only stare dumbly at her.

"Holy Christ, Nya," I blurted out as I took in her disheveled state. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I just want you to know that I hate you," Nya said dramatically, her head lolling over the chair as she seemed to be overcome by a burst of lethargy.

Rie and I shared a glance. "What the fuck did _I_ do?" I asked genuinely.

"Remember how you were going on about how my job as a pilot is so action packed this morning? I recall that I had corrected your assumptions to the contrary."

"…And?" I pressed.

"…And _this_ happened today," Nya glared as she gestured to her stained suit, emphasizing where the discoloration was most apparent from the dried blood. "Got in a shootout with a few gang members after a robbery. A bunch of their blood kind of ended up all on me. You just _had_ to open your mouth today, didn't you?"

Rie made a face signaling that she knew that this was most likely a conversation that should best be kept to ourselves, so she hastily stood up and mumbled something about a meeting before booking it out of the room. I stood up and wet a couple rags underneath the sink in the corner, handing one to Nya as I began to dab at the stains on her visor.

"Did you manage to catch the robbers?" I inquired.

"Most of them," Nya groused. "They opened fire on us and we had to take them out. One got away though, but it won't be long before he's caught. These people can't run forever."

I was slightly concerned at this hardness that Nya was exhibiting – this simmering rage and disgust. Perhaps it was regret for not completely finishing the job at hand by letting one robber go or the fact that she was in this state right now of coming down from an adrenaline high. But as I continued to clean her off, I could see the fingers clenching her towel were gradually beginning to loosen. My spirits lifted, I gave her a smile.

Keep talking. Keep her focused on you.

"None of this is your blood?" I gently asked her. "Are you hurt?"

Nya shook her head as she began to apply her own rag to her arms, mopping away the smudges tarnishing her suit. "Maybe a small bruise from where my safety harness was cutting into me, otherwise I'm fine, if not a little bit shaken up."

I let out a breath I had not realized that I had been holding. "Good to hear. Now hold still a bit." I slid the cloth across the brushed metal of Nya's helmet, near her mouthpiece. I had to admit, I was glad for this interruption. Nya had pretty much saved me from Rie's teasing threats of drowning me in paperwork for the next month. My wife stopped moving to let me work but her eyes never left my face, squinting slightly in contentment, enjoying the attention that her husband was doting onto her.

"You look cute when you're concentrating," she teased. "You're practically _polishing_ my suit at this point."

I simply shrugged, my tongue sticking out a bit as I fought to get a piece of grime out from a slight crevice. "Can you blame me? I like it when my wife is looking her best. Personally, I think that you look radiant after you put your suit through a cleaning regimen. All shiny and everything."

"You never told me that before," Nya said, honestly intrigued. "You sure that you're really from the last century? You talk about loving me all the time and finding me attractive, even when I'm in this suit, not to mention the fact that I'm a completely different species, that I'm a bit skeptical that you could even see me in such a way."

"Like I said, our media did such a good job back in the day of convincing us that interracial relationships were okay. Hell, the highest grossing film back then featured a human falling in love with an alien. It wasn't so much of a stretch with you as you might think. Besides, my opinion is tainted now that I've seen your face – and married you for that matter. You'll get no such denigration from me."

That answer seemed to satisfy Nya, who let out a happy sort of " _hmpf!_ " at that. With her visor cleaned to the point where I could easily see my warped reflection on its red surface, the two of us moved to work on Nya's hood. We soon managed to detach the frayed fabric from her suit and Nya was soon holding it in her hands, dabbing at the blood with her cloth, her helmet now looking bare without anything covering it.

I could not help staring. Nya seemed so forlorn without her hood on. I now had an unobstructed view to the protective covering that encased her skull, able to see the tangle of wires that pumped precious oxygen through filters which connected to the back of her helmet. The wires and tubes trailed down behind Nya, ending in a flap somewhere on her back. Quarians considered their hood as a valuable part of their identity, in a culture that encouraged development of the community rather than the individual. To see one without their hood was considered to be almost as intimate as removing one's suit entirely, as it was a gesture that signified the willingness for all barriers to be excised in the presence of loved ones.

As Nya continued to clean her hood, turning it this way and that as she examined every inch until she could declare it to her liking, I noticed that her body language was a bit off. Stiffer, perhaps. She had been like this for a while, I've noticed. Since we've been married? It was hard to say – it was like there was a question on the tip of her tongue that begged to be voiced but that she had neither the inkling nor the courage to say it out loud.

Perhaps it had to do with the same subject that was constantly tickling the back of my mind as well. But, not knowing when the best time to broach it to Nya for fear of it being too much of a surprise, I could never find it within me to bring it up.

You damn coward.

"Could you touch this up for me?" Nya snapped me away from my thoughts as she held out her hood for me to take. I gently lifted it away, almost reverently, as I now gave the fabric my own seal of approval, scouring away at the faded marks that Nya had missed.

"You don't have to be back at work today?" I said as I concentrated on a black smudge, most likely from a glob of grease.

"Nope," Nya answered. "I've got the rest of the day off. C-Sec policy is that whenever an officer gets into a firefight, no matter how long, is to give them a temporary vacation. Makes it so that we go into work the next day a lot calmer."

"You'd think that after the war there would be a lot less crime occurring. I would imagine that people would be thankful that they're still alive and not try to take things for granted anymore."

Nya bobbed her head emphatically. "You know, that's what I thought as well. But no matter how much I try to think of these things optimistically, there's always another problem just waiting to rear its head. Take C-Sec – every day we still put away dozens of criminals after all that's occurred. Why are these people so ungrateful? Why do they persist in ruining not only their lives but the lives of others? Why do they-?"

She stopped, aware that she was beginning to rant. I said nothing, my gaze soft and understanding. I knew what it was like to be in a crappy situation – god knows I lived in one for too long. The need to let everything out after a rough day was a cathartic experience and a genuine way to cope, and I wanted to be supportive in this case. After all, when I was first thrust into this brave new world, I had no one to share my frustration with and it nearly scarred me for life (not to mention nearly killing me). Nya had someone who cared for her and understood the nature of the plight that she was going through, so it would be helpful to have a steady shoulder to lean on from time to time.

Technically, I was the one who needed to perform most of the leaning but at least we were always there for the other, which is what a good couple should do.

"Sam," Nya took a breath, "you remember asking me this morning if I had an idea for where to go on a vacation?"

I looked up from Nya's nearly spotless hood in my lap. "Yes I do, and I now think that taking a vacation is a great idea for the both of us. I think that we could do with some time away from the Citadel for a bit. Do you now know where you would like to go?"

The quarian gave a quiet laugh. "I think I've known for some time, actually. I… I would like to make a journey to Rannoch."

"So…" I leaned forward, "a Pilgrimage, in essence?"

"Yeah, that's it. I want – would like – to make a Pilgrimage to my homeworld. Unless… you had another place in mind that you wanted to visit?"

I waved a hand in dismissal. "Honey, even if I could come up with a definitive place to visit it probably wouldn't match the level of intensity that you have when it comes to traveling to Rannoch. Did you want to see the capital there or revisit some of the sights when you were there the last time?"

During one of the many long periods when we had been separated from the other during the war, Nya had been running as a combat pilot for the flotilla and was present for the campaign on Rannoch against the Reapers and the modified geth. Once all threats had been neutralized, all the quarians had received the opportunity to go down to the surface of Rannoch and return the quarians to the world that had ultimately borne them. From what I had heard, it had been an astonishing experience for all of the quarian pilgrims – several of them nearly going into conniptions from being able to touch the ground of Rannoch for the first time. It must have been an enlightening moment to witness and it was a time that I deeply regretted not seeing Nya's reaction towards.

"I was barely on the ground for a few _hours_ ," Nya said. "There was no time for anyone to make sense of everything. It… I know it sounds selfish, but it just wasn't enough. I always wanted to go back, but then this stupid civil war started, it's now so difficult to receive access just to land there, and then we had gotten married-,"

"Whoa! Hold on!" I laughed. "Are you blaming us getting married for not being able to visit your world sooner?"

"What? _Nonononono_!" Nya flapped her hands about in a panicked state. "I… I was just pointing out that my… um, _our_ priorities changed a lot after…" Silver eyes blinked pensively. "You idiot, you were just joking with me, weren't you?"

"It's fun freaking you out for the silliest things," I smirked, earning me a punch to my shin. "Ow, you're so abusive."

"And _you're_ so insufferable," Nya countered as she swiped her now clean hood off my lap. Dexterous fingers expertly fastened the ends of the hood in place while belts were tightened around the loose bits, making the material taut around her helmet. It took a few minutes for everything to fit properly into place but soon enough Nya looked like her old self again, actually with a bit of a glimmer of warmth to her now that her hood looked a lot cleaner than before.

"Hey," I smiled as I took her hands in my own. "You got any plans for tonight?"

"Um… not really," Nya considered. "Same as your plans, I guess. I figured that I would head back to the apartment in a few minutes and wait for you to get off work. We'll have a bite to eat, go to bed, and… yeah."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Why do you ask?" Nya looked curious.

My grin turned wolfish as I brought up my mail app on my omni-tool, tilting my arm so that my wife could see. "I think you might want to reconsider your plans, Mrs. McLeod. You really think that I wouldn't arrange for something special for you on your birthday?"

"'Your reservation at the posted time is confirmed at _Gramercy_ -,'" Nya read before her eyes widened in shock. "Wait, _Gramercy?_! You got us a table at _Gramercy?!_ Sam, that's so expensive! You… you did this for me?"

"Well, it's not every day that you're twenty-eight years old. Besides, am I not allowed to splurge a bit on my wife, especially on her birthday? It's not like we are low on any disposable income."

" _Gramercy_ …" Nya repeated. "I… I didn't think I would ever get to go there."

I was enjoying watching Nya become dumbstruck at the fact that anyone was willing to drop a couple hundred credits just to provide her a nice meal. It was something that I don't think that she had fully gotten used to yet. On the flotilla, she had no need for money but was virtually penniless anywhere else. In contrast, I was sickeningly overpaid through my job, and due to the fact that we did not live so ostentatiously, the two of us were sitting on top of quite a substantial nest egg to the tune of a few hundred million credits. I think we could afford to eat fancy for one night – in fact I bet we could eat fancy every day of the year and still not run the risk of depleting our savings. But there was no way that we were going to throw ourselves into that life so quickly and without thought – we were perfectly fine where we were.

"Honey, it's your birthday. You're my wife, I love you, and I'm pretty sure that having a nice dinner will more than make up for your crappy morning. Also I made sure to check beforehand and _Gramercy_ does cater to quarians. They tell me that the Palaven shellfish blended with chives in their cream sauce is superb."

"You spoil me too much."

I scoffed. "One dinner and that's 'spoiling' you?"

"Only one dinner at the fanciest restaurant on the Citadel."

"Second fanciest," I corrected with a wink. "The maître d' at _Dorsia_ actually laughed at me over the net when I tried to make a reservation less than a month in advance. "

"We live in a gigantic apartment! Is that not spoiling?"

"That's just an incidental occurrence from me marrying you," I pointed out. "Nya, please try not to think of this as a ridiculous show of wealth. In many cultures, not just limited to humans actually, it's considered a custom to treat someone to a nice night for their birthday. I figured that some good food and good friends would go a long way into making tonight a special night – all for _you_."

"Sam… it's…" Nya nearly lost the words. "It's wonderful. I'm just not quite used to all this and- wait, _friends?_ You invited others?"

"Rie and Chandler are coming too and yes, I'm footing their bill as well."

" _Keelah_ ," Nya whispered in awe.

"Nya," I placed my hands on her shoulders, my palms soaking up the warm and worn feeling of the enviro-suit before I slowly pulled her into a hug. " _Relax_. We're going to have a nice dinner, a nice night, and I want to take my wife out for her birthday. Consider this to be one of those sappy romantic gestures that has seemed to have been inspired from this relationship. Perhaps I've just been watching too many of your vids."

The quarian nodded breathlessly, still surprised beyond belief. " _Gramercy?_ " she squeaked.

" _Gramercy_."

"When?"

"In about five hours," I checked my chronometer. "I'll drop by the apartment to get changed into something nice and then we'll go. In the meantime, please take a break or something. You look like you're about to keel over in this room. You've got the rest of the day. Go home, take a nap, watch television, but just _relax_. Do you think you can do that for me?"

Gloved hands found my face, Nya's usual ritual for signaling that her feelings were in sync with my own. Her thumbs brushed my cheeks, digits trembling as we both smiled, separated only by a translucent layer of glass.

"Anything," Nya whispered, pure and honest.

After I had seen Nya off with a wave at the hospital transport hub, I walked back to my office with a spring in my step. God, that woman drove me crazy in all the best ways. I felt that it would take a miracle to derail my life right now. Tempting fate it may be, but I felt like I had used up my allotment of bad luck for my life.

In my office, Rie had returned and was back at her console, mindlessly tapping away once more. I too went to sit down but my thoughts were rapidly returning to what Nya and I had been discussing: our potential vacation.

Nya had kept on mentioning Rannoch. She loved the idea of Rannoch, with it being the homeworld of her ancestors and there now being the opportunity to stand upon the sites that were considered most holy by her people. It was probably as enticing as a Jew journeying to Israel or a Muslim traveling to Mecca. It was a site of such huge importance that I myself could not fathom, but it resonated in Nya so much that her desire was thickly tangible.

I guess it was time to spoil her again. Screw it, I liked seeing her happy anyway and this was a much better gift than the clichéd box of jewelry or, god forbid, flowers.

Tapping into my omni-tool after looking up the appropriate address, I was rewarded by being put on hold for a few minutes until an accented voice burst through the silence.

" _Quarian embassy, how can we direct you?_ "

I cleared my throat before I began. "Ah, yes hello. I would like to be connected to your Rannoch visa program, please."

" _Transferring you to our Department of Consular Affairs_."

* * *

 _Gramercy_ turned out to be better than I had hoped. Dim lighting, cushioned chairs, soft tablecloths, and impeccable staffing all gave the restaurant a décor of promptness and well-oiled precision. Add to the fact that the place was insulated enough that every conversation around us never got above a quiet whisper. It felt like our table was isolated in a vacuum like my office at work, immune to the goings on from passerby.

The ceiling was coated with a smooth, black glass, and chandeliers made of thin, delicate strands of glass floated down like jellyfish. Smooth holograms resembling waves smeared across the walls, warm and cool colors rolling with the tides to collide in a kaleidoscopic array of hues. The tables were occupied by a variety of races found across the galaxy – a visual conflation of people with similar interests in food all crammed into one spot.

Had I not been used to all these aliens by now, I would probably be in a fit trying to wrap the sight around my brain.

I had chosen to don one of my black silk suits for the occasion tonight – a sharp looking jacket and matching pants with my shoes polished to a mirror sheen. I even had on a bowtie. Apparently that was one fashion item that had made a comeback over the last century. Although every time I passed by a mirror I had the unconscious reflex to adjust my cuffs and imagine myself as a suave British spy. Yet another example of my cranial corruption by the media.

On my right, Nya seemed to have a glow about her – her suit now spotless and shimmering in the wavy light. Her eyes were constantly beaming through her visor in what had to be a wide smile, touched at all the attention that she was being given. Every so often she would fidget and adjust some part of her suit, be it her hood, her belts, or anything that did not seem perfect in this place. We locked eyes frequently throughout the evening and the answering look in her gaze told me that she had never been more delighted during such a meal before.

Rie sat across Nya, dressed in conservative turian attire – wide collar, rigid jacket, stiff edges to align with her tough plate-like skin. She had reapplied her white face paint to smother out the ragged edges that appeared throughout the day. Her gloved talons nimbly held her utensils as she attacked her food, yellow eyes appearing satisfied in the presence of her friends.

Next to Rie sat Chandler, a dark-skinned human with a close-cropped head of hair. Chandler was also Rie's fiancé. He had been a former serviceman in the army, but had been educated at the University of York with an MBA prior to enlisting. As a result, Chandler's accent tended to sound a bit more formal than most Brits, but at the end of the day, given a few drinks, he could be found laughing boisterously like one of the guys, yelling and hollering on about his favorite football team.

I liked Chandler. Rie had introduced Nya and me to him at one of those endless seminars that our doctor's guild holds every couple months (as a way to distract herself from the droning of the constant array of "guest speakers") and we had become friends quite rapidly. He was in terrific shape – most likely a remnant discipline from being in the service. Like me, Chandler had spent most of the war on Earth, except whereas I was hiding at some refinery all the way out in Wyoming, Chandler had been on the front lines in Beijing, staving off wave after wave of enemy troops until our side found victory through an everlasting determination. It was safe to say that Chandler's list of accomplishments on the field were far more numerous than mine. Not that I was in any position to sulk, mind you.

In any case, I was immensely enjoying my evening, as well as my dinner. _Gramercy_ boasted that it was one of the few restaurants in the galaxy that could expertly prepare the delicacies of all the races this galaxy had to offer. With such a bold claim, I had been eager to see if they could indeed pull such a thing off.

It probably should not have been so surprising to discover that my filet mignon was cooked to perfection. Medium rare, wrapped in bacon, topped with peppercorns, the outside ever so slightly crispy, the steak itself exuded hot juice that the nearby Yorkshire pudding was barely able to soak it all up. Roasted potatoes and asparagus added color to the plate as well as additional flavor. Delicious, all of it, including this soufflé with a creamy sea urchin filling that had served as an appetizer.

Nya's food tube was empty, previously having been filled with chunks of succulent white meat and some shredded vegetables of various origins (all dextro, of course) mixed with a flavorful seasoned paste to add a constant consistency as well as to allow the confection to be easily sucked up through a wide tube that fit into a slot at the base of Nya's helmet. The entire thing had been scarfed down in what seemed like a blink of an eye, Nya having sucked everything in her tube up like she had been starving herself for the past week. She had not ordered any additional food, claiming that she was properly stuffed, so I guess that I could chalk up her cuisine experience as a big success. That will earn me some points tonight.

We were all full, happy, and perhaps a little tipsy due to all the wine we had drunk so far tonight. Even so, I poured myself another glass of a Napa chardonnay, wanting to extend this lovely buzz that was fizzing in my head. Another bottle of dextro wine was positioned beside our own levo bottle, lighter colored so that none of us would accidentally consume the wrong alcohol. Funnily enough, the dextro wine was also made on Earth – genetic engineering and messing about with different amino acids in controlled environments were not that uncommon with many of the largest wineries these days so that they could tap into new markets that the other races presented. From what I heard, making dextro wine on Earth was pretty much business as usual with preparing genetically engineered dextro grapes for their transformation into their alcoholic form.

For some reason, human liquor was an easily acquired taste by all the different races of the galaxy – quite popular by many standards. It appeared that we were the only species to have the ingenuity to ferment and distill so many substances for the purposes of getting drunk. While the other species pretty much only had one notable alcohol to their name, we had several. Like our wine; humans had specially modified it so that dextro races would be able to partake (making a killing in the process). The salarians had a thing for Caribbean rum. The asari enjoyed our gin (especially London dry). The turians guzzled our specialty beers by the keg. Even the krogan had a soft spot towards vodka and whatever moonshine was available.

The final result and message to be taken from this vast and complex supply chain was that all the members at this table were all sufficiently drunk upon the plentiful supply of liquor, each individual greatly appreciating the company of their friends.

As our plates and glasses grew ever emptier, our conversation turned to more semi-controversial topics that would not normally be broached while sober. Chandler had brought up the concept of inter-species relations as part of a clumsy segue out of an awkward moment of silence, using the two couples seated at the table as one of his prime examples.

"…people clearly have issues if they think that dating outside their species is a bad idea," Chandler was saying, interrupting me from gazing at my wife. The human threw his arm around Rie and the two of them shared an awkward smile together. The two of them could really be adorable. "Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here but it really is a bloody travesty when people could be so narrow minded. Take you, for example, Sam."

"Me?" I indicated as I tried to get my bearings back.

"Yeah, I mean, you're married to Nya and I'm in a relationship with Rie. I don't think the two of us would have exhibited any friction from being locked into a relationship with an alien, which kind of illuminates the point of why people would ever look on such a thing with scorn when our lives are still normal to some extent."

"Well, Nya's cheerful personality was one of her many qualities that managed to ensnare me," I held Nya's hand as I said this. "I found that, while both of us did not share all of the same traits, we found that we complemented the other nicely. Her looks were just a bonus, which I will point out none of you will sadly ever get to witness."

"That so, Nya?" Rie said in amusement. "You going to only limit your face to just your husband?"

"Hah!" Nya laughed. "He speaks like he has any say in the matter. This human is _mine_. And unfortunately, he's the only person that I _choose_ to show my face to."

Chandler shoveled one final forkful of food into his mouth, " _Agh blargh gmaw_ -,"

"Swallow your food before you speak, dear," Rie scolded her boyfriend. "Honestly, like an animal sometimes…"

"What I was trying to say," Chandler breathed with a glare at the turian next to him, "was that we're all still normal – we act as though nothing in our lives are out of the ordinary, just that we happen to like partners of a different race. It's just a shame that many others don't seem to see it that way."

"You'll get no argument from us," Nya said. "The people that deride us are just limiting themselves to one group when there's an entire galaxy of people to meet and bond with. If anything, we should feel sorry for them because they're greatly diminishing their chances of meeting their potential mate."

I took a sip of wine and chuckled. "You're speaking like you have so much dating experience, dear. Let me just point out that you've only ever had one boyfriend in your life and that's me."

"Yes… well, I got lucky on the first try, didn't I?"

The group laughed all at once and Chandler leaned forward in interest. "Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever heard the story of how you guys first met. It's just… I've never really personally known anyone that has married a quarian before. No offense to you, Nya."

"None taken," Nya waved a hand in dismissal. "I will admit that it's rare for our people to marry outside of our race, but it's not that unheard of."

"The thing is," Chandler now faced me. "It's got to be a better story than how Rie and I met, right? I mean, we just met in a bar one night and hit things off."

"That's not how I would describe it," Rie said with a playful squint of her eyes.

"Oookay," I made sure to hastily take another swig of wine to distract myself from the hidden signals being exchanged from the other couple. "I think I'll let Nya handle this one. She's better at telling stories than I am."

With a light touch on the back of her hand, Nya turned and locked eyes with me momentarily. For some reason, it just now occurred to me that I had manage to perform a complete 180 with my life – and then some. Here I was, in my early thirties, having dinner and laughing jovially with different aliens in a restaurant aboard a space station – and I was married to one of them. That's not something that I could have ever been able to predict and the thought was so inane, yet it was reality, that the incredibility of the circumstances allowing me to be here in this spot never failed to make me gape in wonder.

The funny thing was that Nya seemed to sense the very same thing, considering that she would not have been alive today if it were not for me. But we were so close to the other that we did not need to vocalize these facts – just a simple look would do.

That was why I loved her.

Nya rubbed her thumb along mine before facing the group with a slight shrug at the suggestion that she narrate. "I can say right away that our first meeting was not really all that clichéd or romantic. It was… different than I would have expected considering the fact that I would be first laying my eyes on the person I would eventually marry. It was on the Citadel one day, a year before Sovereign attacked the station, and I was taking a shortcut back to the shelter that I was living at during my Pilgrimage with some useful tech in tow from the job that I was employed at. The details of that aren't really important, but somehow during my commute I must have taken a wrong turn down an alley I wasn't supposed to go because all of a sudden these three goons came out of nowhere, started to shove me, and just began to beat me up without warning."

"No way," Rie gasped, her hands gripping the table in excitement.

"They were hurting me because I was a quarian – because they thought themselves as better than me. I thought they were going to kill me – and they probably were – but then… all of a sudden, I heard this voice telling them to step away or he'd shoot them with his gun… and out stepped _him_."

Rie and Chandler slowly swiveled to look at me in affirmation. I could only smile and give a sheepish shrug. "Just wait," I winked. "It gets even better."

"He… he stopped them?" Chandler was practically on the edge of his seat. "He was just strolling along and found them whaling on you and stopped them?"

"Not really," Nya laughed. "It turned out that Sam's gun didn't work at the time, so he got beaten up as well."

"Couldn't throw a punch to save my life when it counted," I drolly added.

"Shush, I'm telling a story here," Nya chided. "Despite all that, while Sam was getting beaten up he managed to take out a knife and injure one of the men so badly that it scared them all off. The two of us were in a bad shape at that point: he had multiple broken bones and I had a punctured lung. Sam ended up carrying me to the nearest hospital where I had to be put into emergency surgery."

"Wow," Rie was astonished. "What… what happened afterward?"

"Afterward… nothing. Sam had left by the time I had woken up and I was left with a scar on my chest as the only visual reminder from that night."

Chandler blinked as he turned to look at me. "You just left after bringing Nya to the hospital? Why didn't you stay?"

I tapped my fingers on the table thoughtfully. Going over the entire saga of my emotional state at the time was probably not the sort of direction that I wanted to take this conversation in, let alone bring back said memories of that period. It was no question that I had been in a bad place, mentally, for years since I was thrust into this universe and that definitely had influenced many of my decisions – including leaving Nya behind at the hospital. Besides, the story was too far-fetched for me to properly explain it to my friends. Nya was the only person I had told the entire sordid story to and I pretty much had a breakdown doing so. I was not rather keen to repeat that experience.

Thankfully Nya was there to rescue me from my predicament. "He was told that it would be a while before I would come to," she slightly fibbed. "He recovered from his wounds a lot quicker than I did and he left to go back home, but we had no way to contact the other afterward. It would be about a year later when I was working on a salvaging run for the quarian flotilla, did we come upon a stricken ship left as salvage by pirates. Not only did the pilot of the ship turn out to still be alive, but that the pilot was _Sam_ and we had somehow reunited once again."

Chandler shook his head in disbelief. "That has got to be the biggest coincidence in the galaxy. Out of all the places in deep space to bump into one another, you two met managed to find each other that way?"

"And several times after that," Nya added. "It became easier for us to meet up over time and we eventually managed to find each other in London during the final battle of the war. There we pretty much confirmed that we loved each other in the wake of almost-certain annihilation and have been together ever since."

"Aww, I'm so happy for you two," Rie gushed. "Have you two given any thought for what you might want to do in the future?"

A miniscule frown graced my features, worried at where this line of thinking was going to go, and reached for my glass upon the table.

"What do you mean?" Nya tilted her head.

"Well, _children_ , for one."

I nearly spat out the wine that I was in the middle of swallowing. My face must have turned bright red as I fought to keep from choking and spluttering, but by some miracle I was able to hold everything together, using my napkin to dab my mouth before anyone could become suspicious.

Nya's gaze turned melancholy as she momentarily drooped her head. "It's… not something we have discussed yet," she said honestly.

Meanwhile, I was fidgeting in my seat, desperate to come up with a natural way to segue out of this.

"I think that I would like to have kids eventually," Rie went on, unaware at my plight. "I don't know, it's just a step in my life that I would like to progress to." She gave a glance at Chandler as she said this.

"Hey, don't look at me," Chandler raised his hands with a laugh. "You're thinking three steps ahead of where we are right now. Leave me out of this."

Yes, please. Leave us out of this.

But it was useless as now Nya's interest had been sufficiently piqued now that the subject had been broached. Apparently this was a topic of great interest to her – something that I had not known beforehand. I mean, how could have I known? Nya had never indicated to me if she wanted kids before, probably because she was aware of the natural barriers preventing us from doing so as a regular couple.

It seemed that Nya also had that in mind. "I'm… not sure how we could do that. I mean, it's not possible for me to conceive a child with Sam. We can't really have children together. I… I just don't…"

Nya looked to me for guidance, but found only a pained expression. Her eyes widened behind her visor slightly, now beginning to understand that this was an uncomfortable experience for me. But she did not understand where the discomfort was coming from. Was it from the fact that we could not bear kids together? Was it that we had never discussed this crucial step before? Or perhaps Nya could not understand that I was evasive about the subject of children because I knew that, no matter what, the child could not possibly be of my blood if it came from Nya. I would not be able to pass anything on. Perhaps I could never be able to shake the feeling that the child would not truly be _mine_.

"Let's just say that if Chandler and I wanted a kid…" Rie continued, still ignorant to my mental state.

"We're having this talk now?" Chandler jokingly whispered in a mortified fashion.

" _If_ Chandler and I wanted a kid," Rie emphasized, "I do know that there are many ways to accomplish that."

"There is adoption," Nya pointed out.

"Adoption is an option, but I was reading up on couples in interracial marriages on the extranet one day. Apparently, a big inhibiting factor that prohibits conception between species in many cases is their differing biochemistries. Humans and asari have levorotary chirality while quarians and turians have dextrorotary chirality, for example. In nature, this means that different amino acids make up our proteins and sugars – left-handed proteins for levos and right-handed proteins for dextros, which means that the structure of these proteins are mirror images of the other depending on your chirality."

"So what exactly does that mean?" Nya asked.

"Well," Rie scratched at a mandible. "Because all matter in the galaxy is made up of the same elements and follows the same rules of physics that govern us, whatever protein or amino-acid that makes up our DNA has an analogous component on the opposite chiral spectrum. Take for example what many interracial couples are doing now. Say that a couple would like to conceive but it is not possible with their genetic makeup, but they want a child anyway – so they get the next best thing. They go to a hospital and submit their DNA for a full examination and mapping procedure – not a complicated process at all to accomplish this. The hospital will map out the DNA of the male and cross-reference the DNA and gene patterns in their cells to countless other samples of a differing chirality housed within the clinic's stores. Because of the wide array of samples accrued, the hospital will be able to find a match within a 1% margin of error."

Nya blinked. "I've never heard of that before."

"Wait, I'm still confused," Chandler interrupted. "What exactly does all of that mean, Rie?"

Rie sighed. "It means that I can take your DNA and run a scan to find a near-equivalent sample of turian DNA, genetic-wise, to be used for artificial insemination. That sample can be used to conceive a child while still being relatively close to the DNA of the child's non-biological father. It's not quite so direct, but it's the closest thing anyone has been able to come up with."

"I don't know," Nya shrugged before she turned to look at me. "What do you think, Sam?"

My throat closed up so tightly I almost forgot how to breathe. All of my words locked up and my tongue began to trip over itself in an effort to utter a singular noise. I'm sure that I looked very intelligent in my seat, trying to provide an answer in such a stumbling manner.

Just then, fate decided to be kind to me for once and intervene in the form of our waiter, who arrived with our desserts. All conversation of children immediately disintegrated, to my immense relief, and we soon tore into our food with gusto. I kept on waiting for someone to resurrect the discussion, but it appeared that no one was thinking of doing so with all of this delicious food on the table.

The wine gave way to a nice port, and pretty soon we were all bursting at the seams, sufficiently full and drunk. The previous dialogue was soon forgotten and the alcohol loosened our tongues to the point that we were speaking of any little thought that happened to pop into our head.

Which oddly now happened to center around whatever kinks we were particularly attracted to in the bedroom.

"He likes dressing up as a gimp," Rie blurted out as we caught our breath from a previous crude joke.

"Rie!" Chandler cried out, nearly spitting out his port.

"Well, you do!"

Nya and I were howling in laughter at this point, causing Chandler to redden something fierce while Rie smirked at him.

"That doesn't mean you can just out and say that!"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," I raised a hand to halt the conversation amid my peals of laughter. "Back up. A gimp, Chandler? You mean like the full suit and everything?"

"Oh yeah," Rie nodded in Chandler's stead. "With the zipper over his mouth too. The suit crinkles whenever he walks – it's part of his thing."

I snorted into my napkin while Nya hid her head in her hands. Chandler, meanwhile, was torn between joining in our laughter and getting angry at his girlfriend.

"Okay, fine," he conceded. "I may do a little role-playing now and then-,"

"A _little_?" Rie simpered.

" _You_ be quiet," Chandler pointed a finger around his strangled grin. "That doesn't mean your hands are clean in this. You can get way too rough in the bedroom. Hell, every night we get busy you end up biting me and nearly tearing off a chunk of my flesh! I've still got puncture marks in my shoulder!"

Wow, this was getting rather graphic. I did not know how to sufficiently respond to this conversation – nor did Nya for that matter – so we shrunk down in our seats a bit to minimize our presence while the couple across from us playfully argued as to how much of their private lives they should reveal tonight.

"I can't help it if you humans are so soft!" Rie shot back. "You have to put on your special lotion each night because you chafe so easily! However did your species survive with skin so pliable? Feel free to butt in with your medical expertise, Sam."

"No thanks!" I called out, mortified. "I'd rather not pick sides in this debate."

"Sides, is it? Okay, then let's hear _your_ side," Chandler said. "We've blurted out our weird 'quirks' to you already so now it's time to hear yours. Fair's fair."

I leaned back in my chair and gave a sigh as I raised an arm in defeat. "Well, go ahead Nya. I'm too drunk to offer up a defense so you might as well get it over with. Spill the dirt on me."

" _Keelah_ ," Nya shook her head, embarrassed. "Must I?"

"Ah, fine," I muttered. "I'll dig my own grave, then. I'm intoxicated, I don't give a shit."

"This is going to be good, I can tell," Chandler rubbed his hands in anticipation.

"Okay, so to first give a little context to this entire situation, Nya has never slept with anyone else except me, right?"

" _Oh no_ …" my wife moaned helplessly, but there was a slight tinge of laughter that permeated her overall tone. If she wanted me to stop she would have said so by now.

Rie and Chandler nodded, attentive to every word.

"So, since she's had only experience with one person, there's no one else she can draw on for 'practice,' so to speak. Personally, when I sleep with her, I don't want to get too crazy in bed because I worry that she might not be ready for it. Again, my personal preference. The only times when we do get a little inventive is on _her_ whim, mainly due to some _extranet_ sites she has visited recently." I took the opportunity to give an accusing glare towards Nya.

Our friends laughed uproariously while Nya chimed in with nervous titters. Around my own chuckles, I continued, "So… it is always going to be Nya who comes up with the newest trend in bed because I'm more comfortable to change than she is in that regard. Nya's always going to be the one who wants to try out a new position, a new toy, or something along those lines. But I think that the most hilarious moment was when Nya discovered this little thing on various sites called 'bondage…'"

Chandler's head was now face-down on the table, his entire body wracked with laughter that neared sobs. I could see Nya just shaking her head at me, too far gone beyond embarrassment and straight into acceptance, knowing that she had no way out of this.

"You know," I said, "I'm open to trying new things and can be spontaneous, so when Nya first brought the idea to me, I had to make sure that she wasn't getting the wrong impression of what bondage is because a bunch of people seems to think that involves useless stuff like whips and other torture devices to cause pain. It's not like that – it's merely restraining one partner in a safe environment while the other can do whatever they want at whatever pace they want. Basically creating pleasure through their partner's submission – _not in any way_ related to sadomasochism."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Nya dryly asked.

"We haven't even gotten to the good part," I smirked at her. "So one night, we get prepared and I volunteer to be the submissive one in this case. It seemed like a safe way to start out. We get everything squared away: tying my arms and legs to the bed, loosely I might add, and applying a blindfold to heighten the surprise and spontaneity of her actions onto me. So now, Nya's got me all restrained on the bed, she can do anything she wants to me, and I'm lying down not knowing what the hell is going to happen first. Bear in mind, this was also my first time doing this too."

"Did she like… leave you tied up on the bed for longer than you expected?" Rie cautiously asked.

"Not even close," I chuckled. "It turned out that Nya, upon seeing me tied up like that, might have forgotten the tips I had given her with regards to what this consensual act is all about. I definitely think that she had been watching the wrong videos. So, I'm just lying there, waiting for her to gently touch me or something along those lines, but then she just walks up and _slaps_ me across the face!"

Silence befell the table for a good five seconds before Rie emitted a wheeze of a laugh while Chandler began to guffaw so heavily that he had no breath to make any noise. Nya lolled her head over her chair in exasperation, her hands reaching into the sky like she was imagining that she was throttling my neck.

"Naturally, I'm surprised," I go on, wiping away tears. "I go, ' _Ow!_ ' because my cheek is stinging like crazy and suddenly Nya drops the whole act. She _throws_ herself on me, bawling and sobbing, apologizing over and over again for hurting me. You should have seen just how upset she was – she was legitimately traumatized from causing me pain when I had not been expecting it. It took me fifteen minutes just to calm her down after she had untied me. Needless to say, we never tried anything like that again."

The two of us had to endure several requests for additional stories after that particular anecdote, but we had to refuse each one. Eventually, all of us would rise up from the table, wish everyone well, and go about our separate ways. At the entrance of the restaurant, Nya and I walked arm in arm to the skycar stand just a few hundred meters away while her helmet hid a smile underneath the rosy glass.

"I'm going to kill you one of these days," Nya elbowed me in the ribs.

"Really?" I said mockingly. "That's a disappointment, considering that I still had things in mind that I wished to share with you for your birthday tonight."

"Oh? Please share."

"I can't," I whispered in a wicked manner. "It's a surprise. You're going to have to promise to spare me for the night at least, then you can decide whether or not you want to kill me."

Nya tilted her head, her hands now on her hips in an awaiting manner. "That so, hmm?"

"Yep. Afraid so."

"Well, Mr. McLeod," Nya walked up and grabbed the lapels of my shirt, pretending to dust them off as she tenderly lowered her voice. "You'd better hope that I'm going to like this surprise, otherwise I might not just have a use for you anymore."

"Don't worry. I've gotten pretty good at guessing what you like."

* * *

My answering groan and Nya's final cry of pleasure signaled that our night had finally come to an end, capping off what had been a very enjoyable evening. My heart pounded heavily and my vision grayed out for just a moment as all sensation thundered into existence, opening my pores and bringing new highs to bear. Feeling myself spasm over and over again, my thoughts turned to mush and I buried my face in the body that I was intertwined with, unable to conceptualize a coherent action except give voice to the powerful ecstasy. I was soon spared from my paralysis and I finally flopped back down to the bed after withdrawing from my lover, rolling onto my stomach while the naked quarian next to me continued to quiver helplessly, her eyes wide as saucers like she had just been mentally scarred – which she was very far from right now.

I limply grabbed at a rag to dab at my brow, tossing one to Nya as well. Exhausted, I soon collapsed where I was, my head firmly smothered into my pillow. The room was chilly and the fan only exacerbated the frigid temperatures as any stray draft came into contact with my sweaty skin. I still did not move to get into the bed, finding that making any effort was just too much for my tortured muscles to take.

Once the two of us had arrived back home from the restaurant, all the inhibitions that we had imposed upon ourselves had promptly been thrown out the window. While we were standing in the tiny decontamination booth that had been installed in front of the doorway, my roaming hands started to explore places on Nya's body that would have been deemed inappropriate if we had been public, infatuation turning into intoxication as I began to kiss her suited neck.

Nya had responded by forcibly undressing me, like she had practiced the move from a vid. Buttons flew as she yanked my shirt off, and my bowtie, pants, and belt soon joined the remains of my shirt on the floor. The two of us then worked to remove all of Nya's fabrics and belts that comprised her form as a bit of a warm-up. I had to excuse myself for a quick second so that I could jump in the shower, apply a generous dose of anti-bacterial ointment, and brush my teeth at the same time so that I could be as pathogen-free as possible. Once I had exited the bathroom, I found Nya lying in a seductive pose on the bed, only her bare enviro-suit left standing as the final barrier. With a final hiss of filtered air, I had removed Nya's mask at the same time she undid my knotted towel, uniting our lips in a soft, passionate kiss.

Things would only get wild from there.

What had occurred could only be described as a spectacle of tangled limbs and joyful noises arising from the both of us. My wife's suit had been quickly discarded, puddled at the foot of the bed, while its owner embraced her human partner and husband. The two of us, naked, proceeded in a bout of hugging and kissing upon the bed, while I made sure to have my hands slide over every inch of her bare skin, wanting my touch to linger on her sensitive body – eliciting a surge of hormonal love from her end.

With our desire in no way satiated, our foreplay began in earnest. We started with pleasuring the other with our mouths, one of us at a time at first, but soon we were pleasuring our partners at the same time, using our lips, tongue, and fingers in my case, to coax out an orgasm and to set the tone for what would be a night of pure ecstasy.

Soon enough, we were tumbling about on the bed, thrusting upon one another with no real rhythm in place. It got to the point where we were rolling on the bed multiple times, each one of us taking control and being on top if our passion was greatest. I let Nya ride me for a while before I changed tactics and pinned her on the mattress, hungrily making out with her as I continued to make love to the alien that I called my wife.

At the culmination of sex, like clockwork, the two of us would always seem to sense that it was time for the final act and we would position ourselves accordingly into what those preachy women's newsletters had dubbed the "lotus blossom" position. It was a simple enough position – I would sit up straight, legs almost crossing, and Nya would sit atop me, facing my direction, with her legs wrapped tightly around her waist.

It was Nya's favorite position. Sitting like this was significantly less taxing than any of the vanilla positions we would usually be doing, she could set the speed as well as the depth that she wanted, not to mention all the extra clitoral stimulation that could be gained from making love this way. It was always the final position from which we would end our nights – Nya loved holding onto me like a life preserver, rendering me powerless while her breasts rubbed my chest frantically, our bellies sliding across the other as we struggled to take in air. It was simply a whirlwind of skin for the both of us, leaving me no choice but to explore Nya's mouth with my tongue, adding an entire new layer of desire and love on top of a picture-perfect moment.

Also, it never failed to help Nya achieve an earth-shattering climax every time we ended up like this. Seeing her jaw become agape in ultimate pleasure, hair messy and unkempt, always brought about my ending too. I guess there was just something so raw and sexy about seeing my naked wife as happy as she could possibly be for those few seconds. Marriage had certainly eradicated my selfishness.

And now here we were, Nya clutching her stomach as she fought to regain her power of speech and me slowly suffocating as my face sunk deeper and deeper into my pillow, my entire body stiff like a corpse.

With a shaking hand, Nya wiped her forehead after discarding the rag she had used to clean herself up. She then shook my comatose body. "Sam…" she whispered. "Sam… you awake?"

" _Mmmph_ ," I murmured around the pillow, unable to choose the exact order of words that I wanted to communicate with. With what amounted to a herculean effort, I lifted my head enough to turn it and behold my quarian wife in full.

I always found it amazing at just how similar humans and quarians looked, from our bipedal forms to our facial structures. I'm no biologist but the odds of our species being so nearly alike in terms of body structure has got to be the mother of all coincidences, the chances so remote that evolution should really not have gotten the both of us to this point. Yet here we were, following life's grand scheme – not that I'm complaining one bit.

The biggest difference between us was that Nya's skin was the smooth color of gunmetal gray. It looked silky in the dim light, shimmering off of her nude form lusciously. Her lower legs, what would be analogous to her tibias, were curved a lot more sharply than a human's to the point where her knees bent directly underneath her torso rather than slightly out in front. Quarians also had a reduced number of digits on both their hands and toes, the latter appendages long and dexterous apart from a diminutive third toe near a quarian's ankle. A quarian's waistline was also severely reduced, which accentuated their hips even though the dimensions between our species were remarkably the same.

On Nya's stomach shone a thin line, whiter than her gray skin. It ran down from the bottom of her ribcage to just above her navel. It was the scar she had talked about at dinner – the result of the surgery that had re-inflated her lung that first night I met her. So insignificant looking, yet it was a constant reminder of the life that I saved, the same life that would end up saving _me_.

Structurally, those were the only differences between a human and a quarian; little variations so slight that my brain could easily override whatever desperate instincts I had in terms of finding attraction through looks alone. Now, when I say desperate, keep in mind that I have previously slept with a couple asari and one turian before I started a relationship with Nya, so unless quarians turned out to be the ugliest species imaginable underneath their suits (which they very well were not) there was little chance that I would be put off. Depression plus depravity makes you see things in an entirely new light, which is probably how I was able to adjust to the concept of sleeping with different species so readily, sick bastard that I am.

Perhaps it was serendipitous that I would eventually settle down with someone who looked as close to a human as possible, given our species nature to grow close to what they perceive as familiar, for quarians, as it turned out, happen to be the most similar-looking to humans out of all the species in that galaxy. Not much of a secret they were hiding underneath those enviro-suits, eh?

Yet if someone were to have me describe how Nya looked, the sentence, "The most beautiful thing I've ever seen," as hokey as it would sound, would in no way be untrue. Perhaps to other eyes she would seem a little plain, but after knowing the woman in only an enviro-suit to be the sole person to ever see her outside it, all those emotions coalesce into perceiving ultimate beauty from such acts of trust and devotion.

Nya's face was thin, her lips the same color as her skin, seamlessly melting into her features. A small scar on her left cheek permeated her skin, slightly raised and blemishing the otherwise flawless face. Her eyes were twin pools of liquid mercury, glowing back at me whenever a singular beam of light hit her retinas, a band of freckles dotting underneath them, the same freckles that ran down her shoulders and sides of her body. She possessed hair, barely an inch longer than mine, the strands thin and colored jet black. Her hair was always messy and unkempt, a side effect of being encased in a helmet. I thought Nya looked cuter that way – the natural manner made everything seem more genuine, more real.

I only ever saw her like this once a week if I was lucky. Damn her weak immune system! Every time she revealed herself to me, I always felt a little bit of myself begin to slip away in the midst of her true face – one of those "weak in the knees" moments, slowly losing myself to blind lust.

Which was not what I was feeling at the moment. I was still in the middle of recovering during my refractory period. I'd give myself a fifteen minute window before I could begin to have thoughts of jumping Nya once more. Stupid human sex drives. Can't they just let me have a tender moment with my wife without causing me to turn my thoughts towards banging her brains out?

"Uhhhhh…" I groaned sleepily, my eyes fluttering closed. I must have gone at it with her harder than I thought. All my muscles were pleading for respite and every minute movement I made was bloody agony.

Nya, still trying to catch her breath, shook my shoulder emphatically. "Come on, Sam. You can't be tired _now_."

"You're right," I mumbled. "I'm not tired, I'm dead. I've had a heart attack. You finally killed me, woman. Over an hour of sustained sex and I've had an aneurysm. The blood's filled my brain cavity; there's nothing you can do now."

"What did you really die from?" Nya cocked an eyebrow, unamused. "A heart attack or an aneurysm? Which is it?"

" _Both_ ," was my tortured reply. "All my organs are ruptured. I'm dead. I'm dying, I've died. I'm dead. I'm dead."

"Well, with a reply like that, I don't think that we're going to be able to squeeze a round two in tonight, are we?"

My eyes must have bugged out of my skull in pure shock. "You cannot be _serious_ ," I nearly choked. "You are lying. There is no way that you can possibly want more after tonight!"

"Want to bet?" Nya wiggled her body mischievously as she gave an evil smile.

"Nya… I'm _spent_. It's been two weeks since we did this… two weeks since I've last had an orgasm. I've spent ten _days_ taking arginine, zinc, pygeum, and lecithin just to make tonight special. Ten days of pills. Not to mention the numbing cream I made sure to apply beforehand tonight. I've been drinking water nonstop and going to the bathroom five times a day to make sure I stayed hydrated. I just… Christ, ten days of taking this pill stack… I can't feel my dick anymore."

"Wait… you never told me you were taking pills." Nya's face became red as a fierce blush crept up on her. "Were these those… male enhancement pills that I see advertised on the extranet all the time?"

That caused me to laugh heartily, the effort hurting my stomach. "Oh god, no. I just looked up a dietary supplement combo that I thought you would benefit from. Got the pills from the local drugstore; they basically helped to increase my firmness and… erm, intensity. Apparently it worked because I literally cannot move right now for I'm so exhausted."

"Oh…" Nya blanked. "Is that why there was so much more… _volume_ than last time?"

"One of the side effects is a larger load, yes."

The quarian bit her lip as she ran her eyes up and down my naked body. "How different did it feel?"

Trying to recall the sensation, I smiled contently as I imagined Nya's agape face as the orgasm hit, her moan of pleasure echoing throughout the night. "Think I must have doubled my time. I counted eleven spasms… I believe."

"Mmm," Nya purred as her hand dipped downward sensually. "No wonder you got me to come like that. You sure we can't go again and see if we can… replicate those results?"

My laugh turned into a hoarse wheeze as the breath departed my lungs. "Nya, I have _nothing left_. I cannot possibly muster an iota of willpower to even sit up right now. I've got cramps in muscles that I didn't know I've had."

"I'd be so grateful…"

"Nya… please spare me," I pleaded. "I'm a limp mess right now."

"That can certainly be corrected."

I continued to stare at her dumbly in utter disbelief. Only when my facial muscles nearly locked up on me did Nya laugh and leaned over to ruffle my hair and give my forehead a kiss. "You're right. I'm just joking."

Where did she find this energy? A few minutes ago she was covered in sweat, shrieking in joy, and finally falling limp in my arms to the point where I thought she was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Maybe she had stockpiled some reserves just to torment me. I would not be surprised if that was truly the case.

Thankfully offering me a reprieve, Nya climbed into bed, throwing the covers all the way up to her shoulders. I still lay where I was, cracking an eyelid open to find an attentive quarian staring right back at me, eyes pleading and expectant.

"Come to bed with me," Nya whispered sultrily.

"Can't," I mumbled around a smile. "I told you. I'm dead. Having sex with you killed me."

"I'm _cold_."

"That's too bad."

"Come warm me up."

"I'm dead."

Now Nya really began to pout, her arms poking out from the covers to reach towards my shoulders. " _Pleeease?_ I want to feel you, Sam."

I was amazed that I had been able to keep a straight face this long, believe it or not.

"Sorry. I'm dead."

Annoyance now crept into Nya's tone as she started tugging insistently on me. "Get in this bed with your wife, you moron."

"This moron would like to," I sniggered, "but he's currently dead at the moment. Please try again later."

With a miraculous surge, Nya sat up and now began to bodily pull on me, grunting as she threw her weight back as she tried to drag a 180-pound human underneath the covers with her. She gritted her teeth in frustration and slammed a fist down on the mattress when her efforts to move me proved to be all for naught.

"You infuriating human!" Nya cried. "I don't care if you're dead or not! Get in this bed and _give me your warmth!_ "

Aha. She had finally broken. That was my cue.

Like a man possessed, I rose from my board-like condition and slipped underneath the covers before Nya could say " _Keelah_." With a careful roll, I was suddenly positioned on top of her, my body wedged in between her legs, as our hands greedily found the other's face. Our feet poked out from the other side of the sheets, our unevenly numbered toes gently poking the other as we settled in to our new position. Lowering myself so that I was lying on top of her, I relished the sensation of my skin against hers, as well as her resulting gasp from the contact of my comparatively warmer body.

"Better?" I beamed.

Nya gave a sensual nod, overcome by emotion. "Much."

I leaned down and gave my wife a quick peck on the lips. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you."

"So, have you decided to let me live?"

One of Nya's hands caressed my face, rubbing into my hair as she playfully considered the situation.

"It's your lucky day," the quarian grinned. "I think that I'm going to keep you around."

"Glad to hear it," I said as I began to press my body further into Nya's, offering more skin for me to soak up.

"You feel so _hot_ ," Nya breathily gasped. "Is there just a constant fire under your skin?"

"I'm naturally three degrees warmer than you," I retorted. "That's why you constantly insist on cuddling with me, you know."

"One reason among many," Nya said as we kissed once more.

I rapidly settled into the deeply pleasant feeling of her lips upon mine while our tongues lightly reached out to touch the other. A kiss from Nya was incomparable to any other kiss that I have ever received. Having never had a reason to take her suit off until I came along, Nya had never shared herself in such a physical manner before and every kiss felt like it had a lifetime of pent-up desire behind the act itself. Throw in the fact that being outside was potentially fatal for her (not so in this case due to her already being adapted to my germs) and a hint of fear would be added to the mix – a fear that each kiss could potentially be the last. It added urgency to the act and also a longing for each moment to go on and on, until we could kiss once more and continue to defy fate.

Our fingers began stroking the other's faces, sometimes edging so close to our mouths that, in our passion, we would break from kissing to suck on the each other's digits, uttering moans of content as we did so. The sweat refusing to evaporate from the both of us, I began kissing a trail down Nya's jaw, further down her neck, and ending up at her breasts.

Her nipples were a darker shade of gray, not quite black, and covered with goosebumps from the cold. With a devilish smile, I kissed at her soft breast, squeezing the supple flesh gently with a free hand, before I began to suck on her nipple in earnest. I went slowly, using my tongue to lightly flick against the hardened bud, while Nya leaned back, eyes closed, and let out a soft sigh while her fingers tenderly ran through my hair.

"You know, Sam," Nya murmured after a few minutes had elapsed with me doing nothing but attending to her breast, "they're going to start working if you continue like that."

My gaze popped up to meet hers at the seductive words. "Mm," I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively. "An enticing thought indeed."

Soaking in the soft feel of the quarian's skin, I kissed and sucked at my wife's body, delicately bringing about comfort to Nya's senses. I wanted her to be relaxed and at peace – to make this drunken state of ecstasy last as long as possible. Hell, if I kept this up, I just might be able to go for that round two, given how much energy I was gradually gaining back.

And of course, life would throw a wrench into any future plans that I might have had for tonight.

Midway through a thought of moving back upwards to kiss Nya on her lips again, all of a sudden my stomach twisted into a knot, a blinding pain so harsh that I grunted aloud in surprise. My hands went to my gut; it felt like someone had stuck a knife there. Everything was writhing and twisting, a fire boiling my insides.

"Sam?" Nya quickly looked concerned. "Sam? What's wrong?"

"I… don't…" I began to say but stopped as a plausible explanation came to light.

Of course. It was so simple, so easily explained, that I should have caught it earlier. How could I have been so stupid for forgetting the _one thing_ that I always take whenever we have sex?!

The word _idiot_ resounding throughout my head multiple times, I peeled out of bed, leaving a stunned quarian behind, and hobbled over to the bathroom like a hunchback. I quickly knelt down by the toilet, my knees hitting hard tile, and stuck two fingers straight into the back of my throat, momentarily ignoring the sheer moment of panic as my gag reflex kicked in. There would be little time for me to adjust because the convulsions started as soon as my fingers hit wet flesh and I heaved twice – dreading the rising lump up my throat – and finally vomited.

I closed my eyes so that I could not gross myself out even more; the gagging noises that I was making as well as the sensations from throwing up were more than enough to do the job. Thankfully, it did not last as long as I feared and I spat my mouth to clear it, hoisting my limp body up to the sink afterward to fill a glass of water.

"Oh god," I mumbled. "That's awful."

As I cleared my mouth, I noticed Nya standing in the doorway, one of my robes thrown over her, with a disapproving look on her face. I could not meet her eyes for very long because the cramps in my stomach were beginning to resurface, causing me to sink back to my knees. With a sigh, Nya moved over and placed a hand on my back gently, the gesture soothing yet scolding.

"You forgot again, didn't you?" she simply said.

Head heavy, I looked up and saw that Nya was holding two pill bottles in a hand from the cabinet – which were two of the most important medications that I had indeed forgotten to take before we started tonight: epinephrine and a generic antihistamine. Grimacing, I grabbed the bottles and popped one of each pill into my mouth, the quick dissolving/fast acting patented design of the pills dissolving in my stomach in seconds and enacting the medication swiftly.

"Urg…" I groaned as the last stabs of pain from my gut angrily flared out like sparks. "I guess after taking nothing but a crap-load of pills for the past week and a half that it would slip my mind to add two more pills to the mix. Of course it had to be the two pills that were designed to prevent me from being in so much pain. Oh Christ…"

I gritted my teeth and clenched my eyes shut as a surprise bout of indigestion rose up. Apparently the fight was not yet over. Nya rolled her eyes and made a tutting noise but knelt down to comfort me, a fair bit of her gray leg peeking out from the robe.

"You cannot keep on doing this, Sam," Nya sighed. "This is the second time that this has happened. You have to be more _careful_. You know that my amino-acids are incompatible with yours - you _need_ these medications so that you don't get sick when we do this!"

"Jesus, Nya," I muttered, a little stung from her sharp tone. "I just forgot, okay? I'm not dying from this – it's just a stomachache."

Nya lightly grabbed at my face and turned it towards her so that I could have her full attention.

"Sam. I don't like seeing you in pain when it could have been avoided in the first place, especially since I would have thought that you had learned your lesson by now. You know, you don't need to go down on me all the time. We can do something safer, something less dangerous to-,"

I uttered a short, barking laugh. "Screw _that_ , woman. That's the one part I look _forward_ to the most. I'm not going to give up listening to the noises you make as I give you pleasure with my mouth. Speaking of which…" my eyes slid up and down Nya's body – peering through the slit of skin that the open robe allowed me to view. I could see down from her neck, to the gulley between her breasts, to her slim waist and navel, and finally between her legs. "…to be honest, I'm not sure that I've learned my lesson yet."

A frustrated sigh emitted from Nya, followed by an extremely light slap on my face – just fingertips barely skimming my skin and beard. It was obvious that she was trying extremely hard not to smile but eventually succumbed to the temptation with a dainty shake of her head.

She ruffled my hair as she stood up. "As impossible as always, huh?"

"You know it."

"You going to be okay?"

"In a few minutes I will be," I affirmed.

"Be sure to brush your teeth well," Nya said as she started to walk back to the bedroom. "Then please come join me back in bed."

I watched her depart and get swallowed up in the darkness between the bathroom and the bed. Even in the dim lighting, I saw her shadowy outline discard her robe so that she could slink back under the sheets, naked. Huffing my breath as though I could dredge up some extra energy, I hoisted myself back up to the sink so that I could wash my face and get rid of this putrid aftertaste in my mouth. The tantalizing prospect of my wife waiting on me was eating away at the back of my mind and I was not about to displease her tonight.

"Never refuse a request from a lady," I said around a tight grin before the water splashed onto me.

* * *

 _ **A/N: One monster chapter of fluff right here. I really was not expecting the length of this thing to balloon up like it did, but there was no place for me to split it into two chapters. The main plot might not have fully hit yet, but I think that there are enough hints placed to give you guys an idea of where I'm going to go with this. Of course, I've still got plenty of twists in store.**_

 _ **Next chapter is going to get into some grittiness (finally), so if you had any reservations about this story being a purely fluff piece, rest assured that is not the case. You want angst? You're going to get your angst.**_

 _ **For that matter, I would like to know how I'm doing with this story so far. Please drop a review whenever it's convenient for you guys - I always like reading feedback from people who peruse this story.**_


	4. Chapter 4: Submerge

The next morning started out as innocuously as one could imagine – about as normal as a day could start after a night of rambunctious delights, that is. By that I mean that it was now considered normal for me, when Nya spent the night out of her suit, to wake with a gray arm looped around my neck, nearly throttling me, while its owner slept soundly with her head buried in the crook of my neck.

The quarian's mouth was slightly agape as her head rested next to mine, her eyes closed shut – perhaps the most honest portrayal of what any member of her species looks like underneath the enviro-suits. They're not all ethereal and spectacular faerie-like beings that most individuals imagine them to be, they're perfectly normal people possessing the same facial expressions that humans utilize. I mean, right here was one dozing with the most ordinary look on their face that could be conceived in their sleep. The only big difference in a relationship like this is that they had to be shut away in a suit for a most of the time – yet that somehow gave people the idea in the past that quarians should be treated differently because of that fact.

I was just glad that such an era of persecution had died down dramatically by now. If anyone decided to disparage my wife for any reason relating to her race or her nature to be inside an enviro-suit, I probably would fly off the handle. Fortunately nothing like that had happened… yet.

Nya's breath fluttered against my skin, tickling me, and she murmured contently. Her naked body was pressed firmly up against me, a leg thrown over my torso as she clung onto me for dear life. With another body practically melded to my own, I had to admit that was a little too warm under the covers despite the thin sheets (as usual) but I would not trade such minor discomforts for anything else.

I was not sure if this intense cuddling was purely a Nya thing or a quarian thing in general. I mean, there was the fact that Nya was nuzzling me in this fashion because she was madly in love with me, but also because my body temperature was naturally higher than hers, being a human. Apparently the reason for that was because Rannoch's seasons were not as defined as Earth's, meaning that they had little variation from the balmy temperatures throughout their solar year therefore the circulation systems of quarians did not evolve to pump blood through their bodies as fast as a human's. Perhaps if one were to observe a different quarian with a human partner the same effect would occur: a frantic desire for physical contact all over to make up for a defined lack of stimuli for almost the entirety of their lives. Alas, my sample size for that hypothesis was only going to be limited to one person so it would have to be an experiment carried out by someone else.

Eventually, I would muster my courage, after watching Nya sleep for a few more minutes, to apply a gentle kiss to her forehead. That always served as the catalyst for her eyes to blearily open, her pupils quickly focusing on my face while a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth.

To see the effects of my presence bringing pure happiness to someone… it completely redefines one's perspective of their impact upon another's mind. These simple moments are perhaps the most important points in time that one could ever hope to achieve as proof for your existence mattering to someone other than yourself. In that, you have achieved your grand purpose for your life, you have graduated beyond selfishness. You matter and you are loved.

I could die right now and be at my most content. But then, I would not know if I could replicate any more moments like this. I still had my whole life ahead of me.

Once we were sufficiently roused from our night's rest, we would head into the bathroom for a long shower together. It was our little routine – willing slaves to the process. More _eager_ than willing, actually. Nya loved the water; the flotilla did not utilize any liquids for cleaning as the quarians' enviro-suits had their own decontamination functions built into them, so having the chance to be exposed to water was just as rare if not rarer than getting to step outside their suit at all. The two of us always took showers together after nights like these – we would already be naked at this point so why not take advantage of the moment while it lasted?

Speaking taking advantage of the moment, it was pretty much a bygone conclusion that we would end up jumping the other before the shower would end in the mornings. When you're encased in a steamy box, hands sliding across wet and soapy skin, while staring intently at someone whose face you don't see all that often, some horseplay is guaranteed to ensue.

This morning would be no different.

I'm not entirely sure who started to move in on the other, time seems to slip by me in these moments, but it was such a sudden and natural shift that I would be making out with Nya underneath the piping hot spray, my hands sliding along her back, our tongues dueling heavily. Things would eventually escalate from there to the tune of Nya's desirous cries, and the muted wet slapping of skin on skin. To be completely honest, shower sex is not all that it's cracked up to be – you're constantly trying to keep yourself from slipping and falling, water is a terrible lubricant, and soap is going to get into places where you do not want it to go – but with the right partner and enough enthusiasm, I've found it to be quite enjoyable.

Lord knows Nya did as well.

Once we had finished using the shower, the next fifteen minutes were spent up by some playful re-suiting of Nya's protective covering, with us trading multiple touches, tickles, and kisses before her visor was sealed back onto her head. She was still a little intoxicated from her time being outside the suit in that she was continually attempting to make love to me (oh, the _problems_ I have) but I had to dissuade her each time as we did have work today and we were running late as it was. One would think that with all the action Nya had received last night that she would be in some way satiated.

I was never going to keep up with her libido in this regard.

We took separate skycars to our workplaces and I soon found myself back at my desk in the hospital, subject to mindlessly pounding out report after report on my console, my attention slipping even though it was still technically morning. I could not stop marveling at how everything in my life was all clicking into place at this point in time – this coming from a previously suicidal, despondent shell of a man. There was nothing grating on me in the back of my mind, the future surprisingly clear, that I realized a while back that I had nothing to be unhappy about anymore. I pretty much had as good of a life as I could get now, considering the circumstances. Not bad for a 21st century outcast.

My daydreaming gave way when I started to receive a call via my omni-tool, at last giving me an actual reason to skive off working, not that I had anything particularly important to accomplish. I answered the call using the implant in my ear to direct the audio so that I could be the only one hearing it, much like a cell phone back in the day. Even now, I still draw parallels to the past – old habits die hard.

"Dr. McLeod's office," I said automatically, a reflex that I had developed after working here for a while. I needed to get a secretary one of these days to screen my calls instead of myself.

" _Samuel McLeod?_ " an accented voice asked - female, the sound coming through so cleanly that it was like the individual on the other line was in the room with me. The audio codecs in this day and age were certainly leagues ahead what had been the norm for cell phones. It made those outdated bricks seem like CB radios in terms of the audio quality compared to today's technology.

"Speaking."

" _This is Mohne'Traaze. I'm an attaché for the Quarian Embassy on the 9_ _th_ _Ward. How are you doing this morning?_ "

"Uh, fine, I guess," I said as I adjusted myself in my seat, Rie glancing over at me from her desk. "What can I do for you, Ms. Traaze? Were there problems with the applications that I submitted to you guys yesterday?"

" _Hm? Oh, no problem at all, Mr. McLeod. I was just calling to notify you that both you and your spouse, Nya'McLeod, have actually been approved for your Rannoch visas_."

I sat ramrod straight, my eyes blinking slowly. "You are _kidding_. They're already approved? I just sent in the applications not even a day ago!"

" _Oh yes_ ," the cheerful voice wheedled. " _The background checks work even quicker these days, you see. Standard procedure with the software these days simply runs the name across all the major databases in our queue. Millions of zettabytes of data parsed for hundreds of names at a time. Apparently the turians could only get results for their checks within ten minutes with their current setup. We've managed to cut that time in half, I'm happy to say. And I'd guess that no discrepancies were found because the two of you were pronounced by the system to be approved without any trouble whatsoever_."

"I'll say," I breathed in agreement. "That's… well, that's certainly fantastic news. I'm still in shock at how quickly you guys work."

And could you blame me? After having to deal with government bureaucracy for nearly the first twenty-five years of my life, I had grown accustomed to the simplest tasks taking days, possibly weeks, to be completed. Getting a driver's license at the DMV, voting, filing a claim at the courts, everything that revolved around government matters seemed to be designed to use up as much time as possible for the most useless of tasks. I suppose that it should be natural for me to be surprised when in contrast I'm having to deal with an official institution that's, of all things, _efficient_.

On the other end of the line, the woman gave a polite laugh. " _We certainly try to help everyone and get their cases through in an expedited fashion. Now, I'm sure you are aware, but the Conclave only allows less than ten thousand visitors to Rannoch every solar year due to the current political climate."_

She meant the civil war, of course.

" _This number is expected to increase over time but we encourage all travelers to be on their best behavior. Additional details have been sent to your extranet address containing the range of dates that your visas will be good for as well as a set of rules to abide by while on the homeworld. Don't worry – none of those rules are particularly oppressive, as I'm sure you'll find. They're just guidelines to keep outsiders from stirring up trouble on the surface, to make sure that everyone feels as welcomed as possible_."

"I'm certain that you won't have to worry about us breaking those rules," I said as I began to scan through the attached message while I talked at the same time. "I'm definitely not planning to create a ruckus on my vacation, let me tell you."

" _Fantastic_ ," Mohne said. " _I won't keep you any longer, Mr. McLeod. I wish you congratulations and I hope you and your wife enjoy your visit to Rannoch. Keelah se'lai_."

" _Keelah se'lai_ ," I said back without hesitation before the line was disconnected.

I've always liked that saying. Keelah se'lai. The rough English translation of the Khelish phrase was "By the homeworld I hope to see someday." It had a very melancholy meaning to it but the phrase was spoken almost reverently among the quarians, like they projected their homeworld in the same light as humanity does with its various deities. Nowadays, quarians could see their homeworld any time they liked (the current civil war between Xen and everyone else notwithstanding) but the phrase was still spoken aloud, more of as a reminder of what the quarians had lost before.

Speaking of all this thinking about quarians, there was someone that I needed to spring this news onto and I so badly wanted to see their reaction.

A check of my chronometer told me that it was approaching lunchtime, so I hurredly slipped on my jacket for an informal waltz out of the building, catching Rie's eye as I was preparing to leave the office.

"You're going out?" she asked me.

"Yeah, going to fetch Nya for lunch," I said. "Just got off the phone with the quarian embassy. They've approved visas for us to go to Rannoch. It's going to be like a late birthday present for her and I want to surprise her."

"She'll love that," Rie brightened. "Chandler actually got us passes last month for Rannoch as well – he's a travel junkie and loves to visit new worlds."

"No kidding. I didn't know that you had applied too. Why haven't you gone yet?"

Rie shrugged and looked away briefly. "We never could get our vacations schedules aligned. We might have to now, seeing as you might beat us there. If I know Nya, she'll want to leave at once. Chandler would never get over the fact that you guys would get to travel to Rannoch before him."

"All the more reason to leave as soon as possible," I flashed a grin at the turian. "I'll see you after I get back from lunch. We've still got that krogan module to train on together, remember?"

"What fun," Rie drawled, mandibles drawn back in the equivalent of a grimace.

* * *

I arrived at C-Sec just in time to catch the early onset of the officers leaving for the lunch rush. The taxiing platform of the station looked like a military staging area for gunships, which essentially was what it was designed for. Rows upon rows of landing platforms hung over a pit several hundred feet deep which ships whizzed by to and fro with officers on duty. I had to shoulder past several of the armed policemen, being light on my feet despite the fact that I was probably taller than most of the people in the building.

The station itself had several entrances – I was happening to use the same one on the same floor that Nya's cubicle was located. The interior of the place was not much to sneeze at. A single receptionist occupied a long desk that greeted you just ten feet from the door. The blue holographic C-Sec insignia projected on the wall behind the desk blazed like a beacon, the first thing that draws in any visitor's gaze. Bordering the room were several plants in specially designed trestles – adding some green to the blue-gray plastic/metallic material that defined the building's interior. Bushes, small trees, and succulents blossomed in the cold, artificial lighting, leading me to believe that either these plants were genetically modified to thrive in such dismal conditions or that they were simply fake. In either case, the plants themselves helped to add a more organic component to what was essentially a police station. Not all of these buildings have to look like they came straight out of Orwell's _1984_.

The receptionist, a blond human woman, barely spared me a glance as I approached. "Can I help you, sir?"

"Yeah, I'm here to visit Officer Nya'McLeod," I said as I folded my hands behind my back. "Do you know if she's in right now?"

"What's your business with Officer McLeod?" the woman asked, her tone slightly condescending.

"She's my wife," I answered, slightly irked at the officer's indifference. "I'm Sam McLeod."

"Mc…Leod," the woman repeated slowly as she looked something up on her console. "Can you spell that for me, please? Is it M-C-C-L-O-U-D?"

"No, it's M-C-L-E-O-D. It just sounds like 'McCloud' if you say it quickly enough. Scottish pronunciation for you, there."

The officer barely skipped a beat and moved to slide a datapad across the desk. "All visitors need to sign in while we notify your party, spouse or not. If you could please wait by the couches, we'll have you through in-,"

"-In way too long," a newcomer interrupted as he intercepted the datapad between me and the receptionist, shoving it back in her direction.

I recognized the new arrival. A turian by the name of Kurth, one of Nya's old copilots. Kurth was still dressed up in his blue/white C-Sec armor and thus looked rather intimidating compared to someone like me, even though my football player-like frame was a bit wider than him. I had nothing to worry about; Kurth was a good officer and a good coworker – our families exchanged anniversary cards every new year (for our respective planets).

"Long time no see, Kurth," I said as I extended a hand to shake, to which the turian's gloved and bony fingers quickly accepted. "How have you been doing?"

"A little less hassled of late. Been with vice for a few months now, actually," the turian officer said. "Not so bad, just that there's been an outpouring of new cases related to this human-created crap called 'fentanyl.' Apparently it's the newest designer drug – a painkiller - that's all the rage these days and it's causing the idiots who take it to act like brain-dead robots. I take it you've heard of fentanyl, considering your occupation?"

"Sat in on a few OD's before," I nodded, the receptionist now forgotten. "Not really my specialty but the hospital likes to make sure that its staff is prepared for anything, though that fentanyl stuff is just nasty, what it does to you."

The turian gave a sage bob of his head in agreement, eyes blinking slowly. "Well, I won't carry on about the dangers of drug usage to a doctor. You here to see Nya?"

"Yeah. You know if she's still in?"

"Just saw her at her desk as I was leaving. Should still be there now. Tell you what, I'll take you over to her since she's not that far away."

"Officer?" the receptionist stood up, datapad in hand. "Mr. McLeod needs to sign in!"

Kurth and I shared a look. This woman was certainly nothing if not determined.

The turian just batted a hand. "He can forget signing in – he's been here so many times he's pretty much earned his own access. Besides, Keira, the man's _wife_ is a C-Sec officer – he's as trustworthy as they come."

Leaving the babbling woman behind, Kurth led me around the desk and through the double doors that introduced the next hallway. The operations floors of C-Sec were where all the officers were housed, with the executive floors being on the higher levels. Right now, we hooked a right and came upon the main hallway for the floor we were currently on. It was a few meters wide, enough to allow automated carrier drones through and a few small throngs of people, and host to several more corridors that branched away, leading to the various offices.

"Sorry about Keira, by the way," Kurth said as we turned down one of these corridors, barely avoiding a gaggle of troopers strong-arming a resisting citizen down to what was presumably the cells. "She's new here. Doesn't know all of the regular visitors that come here yet."

"If she stays at that desk for a while she'll come to know me soon enough," I shrugged.

"Might need to send a memo or something to prevent any hold-ups in the future, though. But… then again, why is Nya at work today? Wasn't she in some kind of shootout just yesterday?"

I scratched at my beard thoughtfully. "Yeah, she had her required day off but she pretty much insisted on coming in. I think she gets stir-crazy when she's not working. I love her to death but I don't think that the quarians have a word for 'relaxation' in their vocabulary."

Kurth laughed at that. "You need to make her go on a vacation. That woman is as dedicated as they come, you know."

 _All entirely the point, my good man._

Passing through another security checkpoint, Kurth chatted with the officer on duty for a bit while my gaze was drawn to the wall next to the bulletproof window of the booth. Tiny pockmarks were etched into the metallic surface, the edges ragged and rough to the touch. The markings were arranged in a strange pattern, a gradually descending line from a high frequency of notches to a low frequency.

Bullets from a machine gun carving their mark.

"Still haven't fixed this, eh?" I indicated the bullet scarring.

Kurth shook his head. "Probably not going to. It's a somber reminder that C-Sec is not invulnerable – it keeps everyone alert with the Cerberus attack in the back of their minds. I think it's better than a memorial, at least."

He was referring to the coup by the pro-human black ops splinter group Cerberus that transpired while the Reaper War was still in full swing. Cerberus had attempted to take control of the Citadel and the Council for their own nefarious needs but had been halted at the cost of several lives, mostly from C-Sec as they had attempted to defend the station.

I had not been present for that skirmish for I was stuck on Earth at that time, just waiting out the war not entirely of my own free will. Convenient timing or perhaps just dumb luck on my part. I would probably go with the latter.

I was shown to an adjacent room filled with about twenty cubicles just off of the hall past the checkpoint and bid Kurth farewell. I knew my way from here. I passed by a few officers, giving them respectful nods as I headed to the desk at the end of the room. I saw that there were little in the way of possessions upon this desk – C-Sec would rather their employees kept things tidy – sans a simple electronic picture frame of my face flashing a dumb smile which indicated whose work station this belonged to. I instinctively replicated the same look – Nya liked that picture way too much.

Speaking of which, Nya was still at her desk, and had not noticed my arrival. She was facing her monitor, glancing back and forth from it and from notes in front of her as it looked like she was writing a report. I stood behind for a few seconds, waiting to see if she would catch on, but still she soldiered on with her typing, her fingers a blur across the keyboard. It got to the point where she had written a couple paragraphs since I had started to stand behind her so I decided to clear my throat and make my presence known.

"Sam!" Nya said warmly. "This is a pleasant surprise. What are you doing here?"

I chuckled and placed a hand on Nya's shoulder as I moved to sit on her desk. "I was in the neighborhood and figured I wanted to see the prettiest face in the building."

Nya's gaze dipped downward in the equivalent of a blush. "You're just saying these things to get a reaction out of me."

"It's true! I mean, I just saw your face this morning so it's been kind of hard to get it out of my mind when I commit every second of your expressions to memory."

My wife shoved me lightly, but playfully. "Flatterer. So, what really brings you over here? You usually call ahead when you're visiting."

"Something came up and I wanted to share the details with you. I also figured that we could discuss it over lunch, since it looks like you haven't eaten yet."

"What exactly came up?" Nya became concerned. "Nothing bad, I hope."

"Far from it," I smiled as I stood up, taking Nya's arm and slowly bringing her to her feet. "You have any ideas where you want to go for lunch?"

Nya shook her head quickly in anticipation. "Lunch can be decided later. You can't just leave it like that, you fool! What came up? Tell me!"

Sheepishly, I began to rub at the back of my head as I started to lead us out towards the access hallway. "Well… there's no way to draw this out without you catching on so I'm just going to say it. I got us travel visas for Rannoch."

The quarian stopped dead in her tracks, leaving me to take a couple automatic steps until I realized that my wife had halted. Her arms hung loosely by her sides, eyes zeroed in my direction.

"You did not," she breathed, astonished.

"Sure I did," I said rather nonchalantly. "To be rather frank, I wasn't expecting to get them so soon. These government workers can really move-,"

My recollection was unceremoniously halted as Nya hurled herself at me for a gigantic hug. She had to stand on her tiptoes so that she could lightly bump her visor against my head in an imitation of a kiss. I smiled rather bashfully, given that we were in public, but I enjoyed the affection regardless, warmly returning the embrace to my wife.

"And you deny that you spoil me too much?" A gleeful Nya whispered excitedly.

"If I recall correctly," I replied as I hugged my wife firmly, "you were the one who suggested not only the idea of a vacation, but the location as to where we should vacation to. I'm just abiding by the criteria that _you_ set."

"Keelah…" I swear that I could make out Nya's smile beneath that red visor.

I mimicked the expression, feeling warm from the palpable electricity between us. "Well, we know the location, we have the visas. All we need to know is when we want to leave-,"

"Tomorrow?" Nya blurted out. "Can we leave tomorrow?"

I blinked in the middle of my sentence. "Tomor-… _what?_ I… uh- _damn_ , honey. Tomorrow? You really want to leave that soon?"

" _Yes!_ " she exclaimed. "Of course I do! If we have all the paperwork taken care of then there's nothing preventing us from going. We have a ship, we have the time. We can just pack and leave right now if we choose to."

She actually was striding to the exit in her exuberance, no doubt that she was intent on making good on her declaration. Dumbstruck, it took me a few moments before I ran to catch up with her. I matched her stride just as we exited onto the main floor of the wards, blending in seamlessly with the multitude of races comprising the Citadel's population. The searing brightness of the holographic projections sliding across the walls, advertising their useless products, glared across my retinas and caused the avenue to become awash in their unnatural glow. In the madness of it all, our hands found the other's and clasped them tightly, tethering ourselves to one another. I could feel jitters run through Nya's body from her hand – she was so excited she was shaking.

"Nya, hold on!" I laughed. "Let's just take it slow for a bit and think this over. We've still got to plan out where exactly we want to visit on Rannoch, what we need to pack, and things like that."

"Not up for being spontaneous?" Nya had to call out over the natural roar of the crowd. We hung a right at an intersection and headed down a less packed boulevard, some breathing room finally afforded to us.

"Well, I'm rather hungry right now and I specifically timed coming over here so that we could get some food and discuss our vacation over our meal. Can we at least get some lunch before we go around frantically packing our wardrobes? Can I prevent myself from starving first, at least?"

Nya gave a rueful shake of her head, her eyes impish. "You're so _whiny_ for a human," she sarcastically injected. "I certainly wouldn't want you to waste away to skin and bones. You're a skeleton already as it is."

"Careful, woman," I waggled a finger at her in a teasingly threatening manner. Christ, her snark sometimes surpassed my own, if it could be believed. "You don't get to say that. Oh no, you don't get to quip at me like that after all the spoiling that I've been doing to you."

" _HAH!_ " Nya shouted victoriously. "Finally got you to admit it! You _are_ spoiling me!"

"Aw fu…" I groaned as I placed a hand over my eyes in shame. "You are so aggravating, you know that?"

"As opposed to what?" Nya retorted. "You don't have a monopoly on all the sardonic remarks – I can be just as acerbic as you."

"If I recall, you were a lot more shy that this when we first met. Had I known that you would turn out to be a wise-ass all the time…"

"You _still_ would have married me, admit it," the quarian shot back, probably after sticking her tongue out at me, too. "Besides, you were the only reason why the real me came out of her shell. After being subjugated to so much scrutiny from my peers for years on the flotilla, meeting someone who didn't care about all that kind of forced me to drop all my barriers which is why I've taken up back-talking so much."

"Wow. My own wife calls me a bad influence. After all that I've done, too."

The roll of Nya's eyes was perfectly visible and obvious. "Oh, _shut up_ , you!"

"Thanks for that," I grinned as I could not help moving in close to kiss the side of Nya's helmet upon her hood, cheesiness of the moment aside. Nya laughed in return and nuzzled my shoulder with her head, all acidity dropped between us.

We were almost by ourselves at this point as we walked along the path, just a few minutes away from the main food court. There were only a few individuals in our sight as we passed by a few empty staircases. This hallway was not used all that often for traffic purposes but it served as a great shortcut for us. At least it prevented us from being crammed in a gaggle of people like sardines.

"You know," I mused aloud as we headed down a small set of stairs, passing by a few tight alleys not unlike the one we had first met in, "after all that has happened, after all that we've been through, I don't think that I've ever regretted my choice in letting you become a permanent part of my life – of my family."

The fingers upon my hand tightened greatly. "Neither have I," came Nya's quiet reply, overcome with emotion from my rather frank yet sentimental admission. Our eyes found each other as our heads turned at the same moment, emotions so identical and intense that we were truly operating on the same wavelengths by any stretch of the means.

Craziness. Insanity. No longer words that defined me. This felt right. This felt _real_.

The empty path all to ourselves, I was staring at my wife with an aura of love completely hazing over my vision and found that the sentiment was returned just by her look and just as fiercely. The two of us, holding hands as we walked down the avenue, hailing from separate worlds yet connected by this powerful bond that ignored race, ignored appearance, and ignored the opinions of anyone else. Our own interconnected feelings about the other were the only opinions that mattered here.

I was so besotted, just so happy to be enjoying the moment that I nearly missed the outline of an individual pop out from one of the myriad of shadowy alleys that intersected the road, behind where Nya was looking, a familiar yet sinister object clenched in his hand. The shadow, now appearing human in nature, was on an intercept course for us, I realized, perhaps a bit too late.

And the gun in his hand was already pointed at Nya's back.

She couldn't see the danger. There was no way that I could warn her in time.

I could witness the man's finger tighten on the trigger.

No… No!

" _NO!_ " I screamed as I pushed off my feet, sending Nya sprawling to the ground from my sudden shove. She hit the ground cursing, but silenced as soon as the resounding bang from a mass accelerator weapon ripped through the background noise of the Citadel.

I heard the snap of the bullet whizzing by my head first before the actual report, a small sonic boom sending ripples up my face. In shock, I clasped a hand to my head in affirmation that I had not been hit, finding no blood upon my fingertips. What little passerby that were in the area all screamed and separated in every direction, and the gunman swore as he tried to bring his pistol back to bear, but not to point at me.

As the deranged human swung his arm for the sights of his pistol to rest on Nya, I realized right then that the man was specifically trying to kill _her_. This was no mere chance encounter – this had been calculated and planned with my wife in mind.

She was a _target_ to this person.

"C-Sec bitch!" the bald human spat, the purple tattoo in the outline of a Reaper seemingly glowing upon his face, bathed from what little light that filtered down from the rafters above. "Thought I wouldn't recognize you from the chase yesterday, eh? You don't fuck with the Ascendant-,"

With a roar, I leaped from where I was on the ground and closed the gap between me and the gunman in a blink of an eye. Lowering my head, I tackled the human full on in the torso, much like a lineman, causing us to fall to the ground violently. The back of the human's head smacked off the pavement and the pistol went skidding away, but he was miraculously still conscious, still throwing wild punches and kicks in my direction.

I answered with a few blows of my own, ignoring the pain from the man's swings as pure anger coursed through my veins. A well-placed fist impacted solidly on the nose of the cultist, spraying blood everywhere as it broke. As the man screamed out, my hands latched around his throat, fingers digging in his flesh as they searched for his windpipe, hoping to throttle it with all of the strength my grip could afford.

" _Sam!_ " I dimly heard Nya call out. " _Get back! Get away from him!_ "

Despite her cry, I ignored Nya as I fought to subdue the man who had just been trying to murder her. He deserved to suffer – I deserved to know what made him want to do this. He needed to feel fear.

The gunman's face was turning beet-red as I strangled him. Horrible gagging noises emanated from his windpipe, the only air that had been filling his lungs. His mouth was opening and closing desperately, like a beached fish fruitlessly trying to take in oxygen. My own mouth was clenched in hate, teeth jammed together so tightly they were about to shatter. There was no pleasure to be derived from this – I just needed to see in this man's eyes the regret from trying to murder the woman I loved. I wanted him to realize his mistake.

But then I heard the click.

Realizing that I had been foolishly blind, I saw that the human now had something in his hand – a silver, cylindrical object. He must have plucked it from his belt while I had been distracted in choking him. A little red light on the top was pulsating, tiny little beeps emanating from the device.

Something inside me relaxed, a distant part ceasing to struggle as the notion of acceptance washed upon me for the tiniest sliver of moments imaginable.

The human in my grip managed a bloodstained smile, his teeth coated red, and tried to utter something but could still not find the air to give voice to his words. With a lurch in my heart, one of my hands suddenly grabbed at the man's wrist, hoping to wrench the thing as far away from me as possible, as the two of us became a flurry of limbs while we wrestled with the other for control.

 _Oh my god… please let me live. Please let me see her after this!_

I began shouting in defiance when I suddenly saw a bright flash, and a thick green mist rapidly overcame me as the grenade detonated in the man's hand, blowing it off at the stump with a pulpy boom. I only had a few painful seconds for my face to register the blistering sensation as the gaseous chemicals began burrowing into my skin before I could finally scream.

Blistering, raw, agony. It felt like my face was sliding off my skull. My eyeballs burned and sizzled, hot tears uselessly spilling out. My tongue and throat were on fire – every breath felt like I was only fanning flames. Boils seemed like they were springing up in my mouth, in my lungs, covering every single square inch of my insides with pure, undiluted pain.

My own pitiful screams drowned out everything else before I finally ran out of breath (or life) and mercifully blacked out when my body had exhausted all its options for respite. As everything grew dark, I could barely feel a pair of three-fingered hands grab at my arm, desperate to coax me back from the familiar realm that awaited me.

I was unconscious before I could hear the sobs of my wife.

* * *

 _The bubbles rushing past my face felt like tiny pinpricks – a faint fizzing sensation that awakened me to my surroundings. I opened my mouth in alarm but that only produced more bubbles, to my surprise. It was only from that and the floating sensation upon my frame did I realize that I was underwater._

 _The chill of the ocean assaulted my body all over, slowing my movements and rendering me lethargic. I was freezing, in so much pain, that I did not know if I was even oriented correctly. I could not even see the surface from where I was – everything was so dim and so murky that I had totally lost all my bearings._

 _I needed to move. I had to swim or I was going to drown._

 _Powering through the icy feeling around my joints, creating warmth through movement, I agonizingly began to breast stroke my way to what I thought was upward. My fingers were frozen solid at this point, my eyes burning from the saltwater. My lungs ached for oxygen, but throbbed angrily as they were continually denied the precious resource._

 _A few more strokes yielded nothing, except a building pressure in my head. Spikes were steadily jamming themselves into my skull, spearing a paralyzing pain through my forehead from the bridge of my nose._

 _Pressure… pain… fuck me, I was swimming downward. With a muffled whine, I kicked to reorient myself and frantically groped upward only to stop when a shadowy object lazily floated in front of me._

 _With an unheard yelp, I jerked backward, emitting a large bubble from my mouth. I raised my arms – a pathetic gesture – in preparation to ward off whatever had infiltrated my reach. However, the form shifted around slightly, allowing me to view it in full._

 _It was humanoid-shaped, and listless. A corpse. Draped in a quarian enviro-suit, I recognized those blue accents immediately._

 _It was Vhen. Here, underwater, with me._

 _But Vhen was not as he seemed. He really was lifeless. The fabric that wrapped around his form had been completely shredded away, there was a deep slash that ran from his clavicle to his sternum, exposing the pale bones of his ribs, and his limbs were twisted in ways that nature had not intended his body to be. There was no blood – it had all been seemingly drained out as a side effect from being in the water for a long time._

 _Half of his visor was gone, smashed to bits. Even through the water, I could see the faint outline of his face – to my disgust. Vhen's cheek had been cut open and it was hanging loosely by a few threads of sinew, allowing an unobstructed view of his teeth. His right eye was a dark pit in contrast from the glowing orbs usually found in his species._

 _Heart nearly thumping out of my chest, I edged closer to the broken quarian, a hand outstretched to gently shove the body away, when an unnatural voice burst from it, grating and harsh, emanating clearly through the water._

" _Too… late… human."_

 _Jerking backward, a silent scream emanating from my lips, I hastily shoved the corpse away as the hateful man's words inexplicably came to my ears. I wanted to curse him, to throw whatever profane language I had in my vocabulary at him, to shred his existence with my words so that he could finally remain dead._

 _If only I had the ability to speak._

 _Vhen, however, would not depart so easily._

" _You've only delayed your reckoning," the voice continued to rasp. "You're only going to lose those you care about most."_

 _Liar! I wanted to roar. You're lying!_

" _You don't believe me?" the dead man's head tilted mockingly. "Listen carefully."_

 _And through the cloudy gloom, through my myopic field of vision, the vague shape of a submerged vehicle – a car – became gradually more apparent. And yet, despite me being submerged, I could hear the distant screams of someone… female. Someone trapped in the car – they were in trouble!_

 _Nya!_

 _Ignoring the black edges that were creeping up on my vision from the lack of oxygen, I furiously hurled my arms forward in wild strokes, without rhythm. Yet, despite my attempts to reach the stricken car, I was not appearing to gain any ground as my destination grew dimmer and dimmer. A waterlogged cry raced through me, bubbles exploding all around, as I forced out all the strength in my muscles to carry me forward, but it was no use. My strokes became weaker, my tempo slower, my vision nearly gone._

 _Realizing that I had been underwater for too long, I tilted my head upward, perhaps as a final, longing, glance to see if I even could have made it to the surface. My mouth opened once more but no breath expelled from me this time. My throat constricted in on itself in a vain attempt for air – my lungs felt like they were about to explode._

 _I then realized that I was about to die._

 _I could not hold it back anymore. I needed to take a breath. I needed to stay alive._

 _Nearly involuntarily, but still conscious to fully understand what I was doing, my lungs finally overrode my brain and forced my throat to take a deep inhalation. Salty seawater poured down my throat, shocking me with its suddenness. I barely had any time to wonder how long it would take when a burst of light flared from far away and then I felt no more._

 _I'm sorry, Nya… I'm so sorry…_

* * *

"Sorry…" an unfamiliar bray whispered. "Sorry…"

Blackness gave way to blinding white. Everything felt dry… and itchy. Had I been dreaming again? It certainly explained why I no longer found myself in the ocean anymore. But… what happened? Where was I now? I blinked my eyes several times to try and clear my vision, but no matter what I did, I could discern nothing. White was all I could discern – a permanent fog upon my world. Why could I not see?

Blind. I realized that I was blind.

In a panic, my hands rose to my eyes and met a soft cloth. Gingerly tracing the material, I found that a band of fabric was lightly wrapped around my face, colored white – the light emitting its color onto my retinas. Relief sank into me and I uttered a gigantic sigh, the effort feeling like it took ten pounds off my frame. Perhaps I was not entirely blind, then.

It was only after I finally was consciously aware of my body did I realize that I was sitting, or more like reclining, on a stiff bed with thin sheets draped over my lower torso. The mattress was unyielding and the clothes that I was wearing made a crinkling noise whenever I moved. The crap bed, the cheap clothes, it was all too familiar to my exasperation and disgust. This was definitely a _hospital_ that I was currently interred in, I could tell. But… a hospital for what? Pushing past my garbled dream, all I could recall from my most recent moments of awareness was a frantic struggle, a rabid-faced man as we grappled on the ground, and the explosion of a grenade so close to my face.

The stinging. My face prickled as it recalled the pain that corrupted my body. Everything felt scratchy and irritating.

I reached my arms out, too tired to lift myself up, as I blindly searched for anything within arm's reach. My fingers met nothing but the bed that I was on, fumbling at the poor fabrics. I felt floaty, an aftereffect of sedatives, if I were to guess. The sensation only served to increase the feelings of loneliness that were currently overwhelming my senses – I was lost, sightless, and getting only more and more agitated with being trapped in this little slice of suspended reality. I needed someone to talk to – I needed to know that I was not alone.

"Where…" I could only rasp, wind easily rushing through my throat and projecting barely any of my voice in return. "Someone… anyone… please…"

In the background, something rustled. I listened intently – the sound of clothing rubbing against furniture? It was so close that I realized that someone had to be just feet away from me.

"Who…" I spoke out to the void cautiously, "…who's there?"

My hands limply came to my face to pull this damn blindfold off, but just as soon as my fingers hooked over the edges, the rustling sounds surged towards me so quickly that I barely had time to react, and when the gloved hands of someone encased in an enviro-suit clasped my own, I nearly jumped out of my skin because I had not been expecting such forceful contact so quickly.

" _No!_ " a voice urged that could only be Nya's. Despite her accusatory tone, I let out a breath that had been lodged in my throat for some time, relieved. "No, no, no, Sam! Don't pull those bandages off!"

"Nya!" I wheezed in a pathetic sob but complied with what she told me. "What… what's going on? Where are we? Why-,"

Her fingers now planted themselves over my mouth, preventing me from speaking any more. She was trembling, if I was interpreting the vibrations from her arm correctly.

"Sam…" Nya's pleading voice came to me. Her visor must be inches away from me, I figured. Inches away… but I could not see her! "Sam, please try not to talk. You're still recovering but everything's going to be all right. You just need to rest."

I licked my dry lips. "What… happened… to me?" I uttered as softly as possible. My throat felt weird – there was an odd vibration that seemed to travel up my esophagus, like the words were not resonating properly. On top of that, was that a slight electronic tinge that I was hearing whenever I spoke?

My wife gave a sigh that drifted slightly into a keen. She sounded sad.

"You were hurt. Some… lunatic attacked us and you stopped him. It was… it was that man that I told you about the other day… the one that had escaped the skycar chase. You _stopped_ him, Sam, but… he… he…"

"Are… _you_ … okay?"

Definitely an electronic tinge to my voice.

Nya gave a tiny chuckle but one that was saturated with sorrow and I felt a smooth pressure as I realized that she had gently laid her helmeted head against my forehead, her hands gently cupping my face – the closest contact that I could glean from her in this state.

"I'm fine… I'm fine, Sam. I'm not hurt. But… but you…"

I gulped, the lump having to force itself down a gullet that felt too small. I was now slightly shaking from anticipation, worry, and confusion. My eyeballs were now starting to burn whenever I tried to open my eyelids wider, so I forced them closed with a wince and a slight gasp of pain.

It was miraculous that I could even steady myself to speak in the first place.

"Nya…" my voice was on the edge of breaking down from the lack of clear answers. "What's _happened_ … to me?"

Now her thumbs were starting to gently rub my cheeks – a signal that I knew was an attempt to calm me down. My lips mouthed " _Please_ " to her, my breath passing through my throat with a pathetic wheeze.

"It… it was a chemical grenade," Nya sobbed out. "It… you were too close to the blast. Some of it… got in your eyes… and in your throat. They had to… they had to perform surgery on you."

"S-Surgery?" I coughed out, alarm racing through my veins. "What kind of surgery?"

The notion that I might not want to know the answer passed alarmingly close to my consciousness before it briefly faded away. This was something that I could not run from – I had to face the truth of what was ailing me.

I had to know what they did.

With a grunt, I raised my upper torso off the bed, my back giving me hell for doing so, and firmly gripped Nya's forearms as I leaned to within what I visualized was millimeters away from her visor.

"Nya, tell me what they did."

I could hear the quarian swallow loudly. "They… they had to operate on your _eyes_. You had to get implants to replace… t-the damaged nerves."

She fell silent to let me process the information. The burning upon my eyeballs was smoldering in the background, not intent on letting me forget its sting. I was now more aware than ever that my body was coated in a light sweat, the shaking still not going away.

"Anything… anything else?" My voice was steadier than ever, oddly.

Now Nya sounded like she was crying – afraid at what I had become or afraid at what I would do when I found out the extent of my injuries? God, how much worse could it possibly be?

"Your… your…" Nya tried to say but failed miserably.

Instead, she gently took my hand and guided it up to my throat. My fingers found my warm flesh, able to discern the pulse throbbing through my arteries clearly. I felt skin covered in goosebumps, rough hairs resulting from an untrimmed beard, and as Nya slowly moved my hand further down my neck, my fingertips brushed against something metallic.

My first thought was that it felt like a port of some kind where one would normally plug in electronic equipment. But further inspection through my touch revealed that it was circular in shape, barely protruding above the skin and less than a centimeter in diameter, covered in a fine grate, and actually _embedded in my throat_.

No… it was not…

"What… is this?" I whispered in horror, now having an inkling as to why there was an electronic hint every time I spoke. Nya did not answer as she had fallen silent while witnessing what little facial features were revealed on my face slide from anxiety, to terror, and finally to a melancholy denial.

I did not know the exact details of the unsaid operation that I had underwent, but I knew what a tracheostomy site was through touch alone. The hole in my throat – the slight wheeze – it all made sense. But why would I need to have a tracheotomy procedure performed on me? Surgeons only did that if one had severe cancer of the throat or if one's vocal cords were terribly paralyzed from trauma.

Paralyzed from trauma.

Paralyzed.

"My… voice," I mumbled, tears punching through the barrier of pain and soaking into my blindfold. Hot trails raced down my face as reality came crashing up to meet me.

Now I knew why I could not talk properly. My vocal cords had been so irreparably damaged from whatever compounds that I inhaled that I had nearly lost my ability to sound words. What little voice that I had left was only a pathetic gasp, barely discernable past my lips.

"I'm so s-sorry, Sam," I heard Nya speak, her own voice sounding distant even though I was holding her in my arms.

Teeth clenched, eyes shut, the tears continued to flow – liquid fire boiling away at my eyes as the droplets reacted to the fresh implants in the soft tissue. I hiccoughed out a nasty sob, my body beginning to wrack as I started to cry, terrified and dismayed at what had been ruined by one man's terrible actions. How quickly everything could turn upside down for me.

Nya hurried herself into the bed with me, holding me close as I wept. My head rested gently against her visor once more as we laid back down; the maimed human with his quarian lover. I'm sure I must have looked so pathetic in that position, but I was glad to have someone to hold on to. I needed the support – the love – _her_.

Even as the tears ran dry, I still cried for all the pain I had endured and had yet to endure. Nya made sure to cry along with me, but never let go of my body to remind me that she would always be there.

"No matter what," Nya croaked after what seemed like hours have passed, "you're alive and you're with me. You will be fine, Sam. You will be fine."

Her words were so sincere about me getting through this that I almost believed her.

Almost.

* * *

It must have been hours later when I was allowed to remove the blinder from my face – I can't really recall when – and no matter how many times the doctors tried to dissuade me, I could not stop rubbing at my eyes to try and stop the pain.

Ever get the sensation of there being something in your eye? That aggravating itching from a stray bit of something getting lodged underneath your eyelid? Now imagine your eyelids being completely caked with junk underneath and every single conceivable square inch of surface area upon your eyeballs flaring up in anger. It literally felt like something was actually gnawing on my corneas and I was only going to continue rubbing at them until the medical staff threatened to bind my hands to the bed to prevent me from damaging my eyes any further.

Once again I had become reduced to being a patient in a hospital. I thought that I was done with this sort of thing! At this point I had been admitted to hospitals more times in four years than I had for most of my pathetically short life.

The staff had given me a mirror so that I could examine my injuries in greater detail. The first thing that I took care to notice were my eyes, obviously. They were red all around the edges (my constant rubbing only exacerbating the skin irritation) but for the most part they did not look distinctly too different. If I looked hard enough, though, and at the right angle, I could see faint traces of wires glowing within the soft flesh– the implants needed to facilitate the healthy tissue that had not been damaged from the gaseous attack.

Apparently a good portion of my eyes had been dissolved by whatever chemicals were packed in that grenade. It was only fortunate that I had been unconscious so I could not register the undoubtedly catastrophic pain that would have ensured from wounds like that. The implants helped to rapidly regenerate any of the missing tissue and to prevent my body from rejecting the newly grown material. That meant that my eyes were no longer 100% percent natural, but an amalgamation of organic and synthetic components mimicking the function of an eye. Aside from the irritation of the surgery's operations, I had to note that there was not that big of a difference that I could discern.

My throat was a whole different story. On the surface, it just looked like someone had tried to shove a metallic port into my neck in a vain attempt to kill me, but I knew that the port itself was probably one of the reasons that I was alive right now. I put my fingers up to the port but did not feel any air hissing through it. Strange, I was still breathing normally. That was not typical of a tracheotomy. I would have to ask the doctors about that.

The door to my room opened and my head perked up as Nya walked in with a visitor in tow. I smiled broadly at the presence of my wife, which cooled slightly as I now studied the new arrival with her.

The quarian that accompanied Nya was perhaps a few inches taller than her, with a rose-colored visor and slight accents of golden cloth that embraced his form. The warm fabric draped around the quarian's neck loosely and trailed down his back like a backwards scarf, making him appear to be well-traveled. He (it was obvious it was a he) seemed to be a few decades older than us, judging by his more poised appearance and for the fact that the glow of his eyes hinted at a wiser than usual quality. Immediately my interest was piqued, curious as to why this man was here.

"Hello dear," I greeted Nya, never taking my eyes off of the male. "Who's this that you've brought?"

My voice had actually begun improving little by little after I had awoken. Turns out additional cybernetics had been installed inside my throat as it was a particularly painstaking process to reconstruct vocal cords. The easiest solution was simply to add implants in my throat to supplement my voice by artificially amplifying the breath in my throat and converting it to words through nano-speakers in my throat. Thus why I had noticed why my voice had sounded slightly tinny for the past few hours.

Nya turned to introduce her guest. "Sam, this is Iroa. He's a science officer for the cyberwarfare division on Rannoch."

"How do you do?" I sat up and extended my hand. The quarian returned the shake, his grip light but his fingers firm. "You two know each other?"

Iroa shook his head, almost a majestic gesture. "Oh no, Mr. McLeod," he said, "I was simply passing through this wing to check up on my men. The Conclave is now encouraging all quarians to go to the Citadel so that we can receive better treatment for pathogens. Also, they have more ready access here to vaccines that are critical to preventing sickness among our people. Anyway, I happened along Nya here as I was wandering the grounds and we struck up a nice conversation – with so few of us scattered across the galaxy us quarians don't really have the luxury of ignoring one another. She mentioned that she was with a friend that had been grievously injured and… and I guess I simply wanted to extend my best wishes. I can see that you mean quite a lot to her."

The chuckle I elicited was barely above a rasp, but the meaning remained just the same. Sometimes the cybernetics failed to fully process my voice, I learned, which meant that my wheezing speech would be occasionally emitted without the additional amplification. "Yeah. She means a lot to me as well. I don't know where I'd be without her."

"He tends to get a little dramatic sometimes," Nya cheerfully explained to Iroa.

"Thanks for undermining me there, dear," I grumbled, but was happy to see that Nya was starting to relax more as my condition was already starting to improve.

Iroa scanned back and forth between us, like he was missing some critical bit of information and he was having trouble processing the subtexts. "I realize that it may seem like I'm intruding, Mr. McLeod, but-,"

"Please, call me Sam," I interjected. "I'm still not a big fan of being called 'Mister' in a formal manner."

"All right then, Sam it is."

Maybe it was because I had been confined to this bed for more time than I would prefer and had seen a limited amount of people over that period of time, or it was because Iroa was one of the few quarians that I had conversed with that seemed personable and courteous, able to strike up an exchange naturally. His voice was low, slightly ragged from age, but pleasantly soothing to listen to.

I've got to admit, I was starting to like Iroa already.

The elder quarian then cleared his throat. "As I was about to say, are you doing all right now, Sam? Nya told me all about what happened to you – simply shocking. Ruthless criminals wandering the Citadel, attacking officers, no less."

"Hard to say," I considered as I consciously rubbed my throat. "I suppose I'll know how debilitating these injuries are going to be over the next few days. I think the painkillers they gave me are still working full steam."

Iroa nodded sagely. "I too know what it's like to recover from a debilitating injury – from being young and foolish, but that's an entirely different story." He now looked at Nya. "Is C-Sec doing anything about this? They can't be pleased that one of their own was attacked so blatantly, I'm sure."

Nya's hands twisted themselves into a knot. "They're beginning to crack down a lot more heavily on suspected cultist residences. They've offered me an extended leave with pay… but I don't know if I want to take it. I guess that I just want to be left alone for a while and be with Sam while he recovers."

"Yes," Iroa said. "And that's the right thing to do. Friends and family are the most important things we have, especially during these times. And actually, Sam, I've heard tell that you were to plan a trip to Rannoch with Nya, from what she told me. A vacation certainly would be a good distraction from what you two have gone through."

"That _was_ the plan," I sighed. "Not sure when we'll get a chance to go now, but it's certainly set in the future. Have you ever been?"

"I just came back from Rannoch," Iroa said proudly. "I've been stationed there for the past year. I do hope you get to see it – the homeworld is certainly a sight to behold. Perhaps not as much for you humans but for quarians it's almost a religious experience being on the same soil once again that your Ancestors walked upon. It's a remarkable place."

Nya bobbed her head excitedly. "Iroa was just telling me about this place that sounded so cool to visit. It was about this canyon with a natural spring of fresh underground water – and the greenest vegetation on the planet that he's seen. It's something that we have to check out! It's called the… what was it called again, Iroa?"

"The Dimeran Canyon," Iroa offered. "Certainly the most magnificent site I've seen on the homeworld thus far."

"Yes, the Dimeran Canyon! We're going to have to put that on the itinerary."

I smiled fondly as talk of the vacation helped to dispel some of the agonizing thoughts from lying in a hospital bed. "I can't wait to see it once I get out of here and get better."

Iroa walked forward and placed a firm hand on top of mine, giving it a thoughtful pat. "You probably already are aware of this, but you're lucky to know someone that cares about you in your life. I certainly know the feeling."

"Not lucky enough to stay out of the hospital," I gave a painful smirk, "but certainly lucky enough to run into the right people throughout my life."

" _Eh'van shallus_ ," Iroa whispered reverently.

Lost, I looked at Nya for help.

"It's an traditional saying among quarians, Sam," she explained. "It roughly means, ' _Through eternity, our Paths unite_.'"

"Ah, so it's kind of like an ' _Amen_ ,' or something like that. But what does the ' _Path'_ mean, specifically?"

"The Path refers to the entirety of our life's course, I would say. It's a metaphor for outlining our journey and how we change as people as we grow. And our growth is represented by us walking down our Path, which intersects several times along the way with other people's Paths – symbolizing our interactions with others and how they impact us."

"Like if you were to marry someone," Iroa interjected, causing Nya and I to share an inconspicuous glance, "two Paths would converge to create one instead of simply intersecting and the two of you would now be walking together instead of alone. It's an idea that we still cling to but it holds little clout amongst our people these days. I'm afraid that whatever blessings we still carry out in service today are only fragments of how our culture used to blossom in its heyday. We were vibrant and multifaceted beings back then."

"I'm hoping that things can return to that state," Nya said to Iroa. "If we could reclaim back our homeworld, what is preventing us from being an influential culture again?"

Iroa shifted back and forth on his feet. "To be respected and admired once more. Wouldn't that be something?"

Before Iroa could continue in his reverie, the doors parted and an asari in doctor's garb swiftly and elegantly entered, her eyes hardened from experience. She made a wide orbit around my bed so that she could stand within a few feet from where I was laying before she opened up her omni-tool to search for what I presumed was my medical records.

She did not immediately address me, but it was only until she had taken stock of the individuals within the room did the asari turn to me and smile kindly. "Are these nice people your family, Mr. McLeod?"

"I'm not," Iroa offered before I had a chance to open my mouth. "I was just departing, actually."

Nya gave a slight lurch, like she was surprised at how quickly the man had decided to up and go just like that. "Are you sure? We can-,"

The elder quarian waved a hand and shook his head. "No, it's probably best that I leave before I sit in on matters too private. I've intruded enough as it is."

"In any case," Nya said as she stepped forward to take Iroa's hands, "I know it wasn't much, but thank you for your support – and for the suggestions. It was nice of you to be here."

Iroa eyed Nya carefully. "I do hope that we will meet again, Nyareth. And you, Sam, I also hope that you make a speedy recovery."

I gave a somber look, mouth thinning into a line. "You and me both, Iroa. Thank you for stopping by."

The man gave a final, respectful, nod of his head that was intended for the both of us, before he walked out of the room without a second glance back. A rather interesting individual, that one. I did indeed wonder if I would see him again.

Meanwhile, the asari doctor flipped through some folders on her omni-tool before she gestured to Nya. "Will you be staying, miss…?"

"McLeod," Nya answered with a hint of pride. "I'm this man's wife."

To her credit, the asari did not even bat an eye. She just reached around and slid a chair forward from the side of the room. "Please, have a seat, Mrs. McLeod."

"Thank you," Nya said as she took the offered chair.

The asari claimed another chair for herself and sat down on the opposite site, giving me a sympathetic look the entire time. "I'm Dr. Naetha, the surgeon who operated on you a few hours ago. The staff alerted me that you could speak a little more clearly now that you've been conscious for a bit. How are you doing, Sam? Or Doctor McLeod? Which would you prefer me to call you?"

"Sam, please," I said. "And I'm doing as well as can be expected. Throat's a little rough and my eyes burn but otherwise I'm all right."

Dr. Naetha's smile cooled into a sad line. "I know, Sam. That's all a direct effect from the chemicals that you were exposed to from the gas grenade. The antibiotics are working to counteract the irritants and they should dissipate within two weeks at the maximum. You nearly died from your prolonged contact to whatever fillers were in that grenade, which from what we could tell from neck swabs, was a combination of DM and CS gases in such high concentrates that, considering how much you inhaled, you're really lucky to be alive."

"CS gas?" Nya asked. "What is that?"

"Its official name is 2-chlorobenzalmalnonoitrile and it-,"

"Bless you," I muttered.

"…and it is a human invention that was developed a couple centuries ago to be used primarily for riot control. It's specifically designed to cause the eyes to burn and tear up, which is why you've been affected with these symptoms, Sam."

"Now I kind of feel guilty," Nya hung her head. "I made it out fine because my mask automatically filters out any toxins."

I held out a hand, palm up, for her to take. Nya grabbed at my hand almost immediately after it had been offered. "There was no way for you to know what would happen," I said, nearly having to cough as my throat tickled slightly. "I don't ever want you to blame yourself for this."

"Still, if I had captured that crook in the beginning-,"

" _Nya_ ," I said louder this time, finally resulting in me having to take a singular cough filled with pain. "Nya… enough. No one is blaming you. This is not your fault. If it's anyone's fault it's that bastard who did this to me. What's become of him anyway?"

Dr. Naetha gave a grim look. "Unfortunately… or perhaps fortunately from your perspective, the suspect died en route to the hospital. Whatever dose you received from the grenade, he got worse. His windpipe closed up so fast that we could not find a way to save him before he suffocated. The same thing would have happened to you if we hadn't performed a tracheotomy and rerouted the air through that. Suffice to say, that little hole in your neck is the reason you're still alive right now."

I unconsciously rubbed around the little vent, unease gripping me all the way down to my toes. "No kidding," I whispered hoarsely.

"The hole in your neck will be healed shortly from skin grafts; it's just that we want to keep the site open for a day or two more in case you begin to exhibit any complications from your surgery."

"And what exactly are the details of the surgery?"

"Phonosurgery – we tried repositioning your vocal cords, but the gas was so potent that it ate away at a lot of your cords. We had to install synthetic alternatives to replace the amount of tissue that was lost which is why your voice might sound a little artificial from time to time. You're going to have to be careful – the inner wall of your esophagus as well as your lungs were heavily damaged. Your respiratory system had to be vacuumed while you were out to get all the discharged fluid from your lungs. You're going to exhibit internal scarring and a weakened throat from now on."

Nya's head drooped in response to the news and I ground my teeth bitterly. "Am I going to have to make some lifestyle adjustments to avoid making my injuries worse?" I asked Dr. Naetha.

"Yes, that is the unfortunate part. I have to warn you, Sam, that you're going to be a lot more susceptible to injury now that the inner walls of your throated have been severely weakened from the resulting damage. If you raise your voice above a certain volume or even cough in the wrong manner, you could risk easily tearing open the walls of your throat, which could cause large amounts of internal bleeding. You might be coughing up blood for the first month – and you will need to treat it immediately to prevent yourself from losing too much blood. For that matter, you should probably steer away from acidic foods for a while because they will also serve to eat away at your throat. I probably should also mention this since we're on the subject… you're going to have to avoid oral sex for a few weeks, at least until your throat has healed to a certain point."

It felt like a brick wall had careened into my body and I sagged helplessly into the bed. Now I was suddenly so vulnerable, easily damaged. Reversal of fortunes in yet one of the million ironic twists that had permeated the mangled journey of my life.

"What are my options?" I asked morosely.

Dr. Naetha consulted her omni-tool. "We're going to issue you an inhaler for medi-gel in an aerosol form. You should do well to use it twice daily or whenever you start coughing up blood. It will help against the worst of the pain and will prevent any infections from occurring." The asari then gestured for Nya to scoot closer to me, to which she complied. "But the best treatment that I can recommend is something you already have: companionship. Believe me, recovering from this sort of injury is so mentally taxing that it just drains people day after day. The patients that have someone to look after them – your wife, for instance – fare so much better because they feel like they are genuinely cared about. It gives them purpose, a goal. The ones who are within close proximity to their loved ones have been proven to be less depressed in the long run."

I had to give a sad smirk at that. If anyone knew anything about being depressed, it was this guy right here. Me. Once the epitome of despondent, I had practically hit rock bottom before during the multiple times that I had tried to commit suicide. This bit of history was still an unknown to the people around me, even Nya to a certain extent, and that was a bit of my past that I was going to take to my grave without a second thought.

The notion that I could possibly sink back to that level never registered on my mind. I had no reason to tear myself apart over this. This wound – all that had just happened – was painful, but I've been through worse things before. I could handle this, but the doctor was right, it was going to be hard.

Thank god I would not be alone this time.

As Dr. Naetha continued to go into additional detail about my injuries, I gradually began to lose focus, staring intently at some random spot on the wall where my gaze had decided to rest. Barely listening, I gave half-hearted nods at the intervals when I heard silence, the only reflex action that I could accomplish at this point.

Nya's hands came to rest upon my shoulders delicately, keeping me afloat in the storm. As my hand reach up to touch hers, I could not help but wonder that if all this – my injuries – were some kind of payback for me surviving this long in this foreign universe. Despite the fact that I've been here a while, I was still an anomaly – and the universe is constantly attempting to rectify its anomalies. Was I just a victim of the grand equation trying to balance itself out through eliminating me from my existence in this universe?

I was thinking theoretically now and that meant that I was never going to reach a clear answer that would satisfy me. Yet that also meant that I would never feel fully healed, either.

Maybe I am meant to always stay broken.

* * *

 **A/N: All fluffy things must come to an end (at least, that's how I think the quote goes...)**

 **Told you that the grit was on its way. I've got an evil reputation to keep up here. We're going to see more of Sam's despondency in the next chapter, but things will take a pivot soon after. I've still got more characters to introduce and flesh out - including one that I'm particularly eager to write about.**

 **Let me know what you think!**

 **Sam/Cultist Fight: "Bullet Train" by Marco Beltrami from the film _The Wolverine_. (I'm a fan of the dissonant wailing of the horns - a good representation for chaos in the moment)**  
 **Underwater Dream: "Watertank" by Junkie XL from the film _Divergent_. (Terrible movie, but the score is a guilty pleasure.)**


	5. Chapter 5: Recovery Through Agony

It's official: I'm in hell. It took me a while to get here, I'll admit, but I achieved it nonetheless. After all, from how much I've been hurting over the past few days, what could this be if not hell?

This was certainly a new realm of misery for me and that was saying something. I've been involved in air-to-ground collisions, set on fire, punched in the face god knows how many times, and have had limbs cut off (which were subsequently reattached), but I don't think that any of those incidents could compete with the sheer amount of pain that could be elicited from an internal throat wound.

In contrast to my previous injuries, I have to concede that all of them were very painful indeed, but they had not lasted as long as what I was going through now. It had been two weeks since those chemicals had gotten in my face – four days spent in the hospital and ten days recuperating at home – and I _still_ felt nowhere near one hundred percent functionality. If anything, I've been stuck at square one in regards to my complete and total functionality the entire time.

The amount of times that I've sardonically wished to die had become too numerous to count at this point. Was it too early to consider this a relapse into my old and depressed behavior?

The hole in my throat from the tracheotomy had been closed up days ago, leaving a small patch of white scar tissue, but there were still issues with my body that would never be the same again, issues that not even the surgeries could fix. My voice could barely be emitted above a whisper on its own but the synthetic implants in my throat did a fair job in amplifying my volume so that I could be audible, but it came at a cost of me sounding a bit robotic with that electronic tinge permeating anything that I said. I actually now sounded a lot like I was wearing a quarian vocabulator as the same static reverb effect was present in Nya's suit speakers, sans the exotic accent. Still, it was better than people having to lean in to hear me whenever I would rasp, but it was going to take some time for me to get used to this development.

I was on a constant dose of medi-gel, applied twice daily to heal my wounded throat via an inhaler. The stuff stung whenever I breathed it in – quite unpleasant. The treatment was necessary as there was still residue from the chemicals embedded in the cells of my throat that the medi-gel had to enact against. It would help with my overall healing as I would occasionally spit up blood from trying to say a word too loudly or if I coughed just a bit too hard, which would result in a tear ripping along my throat. Eventually my wounds would recover enough to the point that I would no longer need the inhaler, but the date as to when that would happen was still up in the air.

To add injury to injury, so to speak, my eyes were not faring much better either. Granted, they did not hurt as much as when I had first woken up from my surgery, but itchy eyeballs can be the bane of anyone's existence. I must have rubbed at my eyes so much the first couple days that they had nearly started to bleed. It had gotten to the point where Nya had to threaten to handcuff me if I did not stop rubbing at them as, obviously, doing so was simply causing more damage. It was hard for me to resist as the rubbing did provide temporary relief, but I was duty-bound to comply with my wife who was just concerned at my overall health. I was seriously starting to question if these implants in my eyes were even worth the trouble over me simply being blind, considering the amount of irritation they had been giving me thus far.

Okay, that was probably not true, but I would be lying if I proclaimed that I was fine, mentally.

Take this morning for instance. It had now become routine for me to be rudely awoken to the beginnings of a tickle in my throat in the early hours, which would result in a string of coughs being emitted from my ruined windpipe. After a dizzying spell of inhaling medi-gel (which usually caused me to sink to my knees in pain – the sensation feeling like I had swallowed an entire box of industrial-grade pop rocks) I come to realize, as usual, that attempting to continue my sleep would be fruitless and a waste of time altogether.

Breakfast was the next logical step – but that was just another crap-load of problems awaiting to rear its head.

As the doctors had made sure to mention to me _ad nauseum_ , food consumption would prove to be a tricky endeavor for me until my throat had healed as best as it could. Only specific foodstuffs were considered acceptable to be eaten if I was to keep myself clean on the healing schedule. That meant I could not eat acidic foods whatsoever such as citrus, sweeteners, salty substances, and worst of all, coffee.

No coffee. _Fuck_. Now how was I supposed to live my life without my go-to caffeinated beverage?! A few years ago this would have been perfect grounds for suicide, but now that I was married and had actual responsibilities, I was just going to have to suck this up.

I was still livid at this development, though.

The restriction of coffee was only half the agony. Throw in the fact that I also could not eat any solid food that required chewing as any irregularly shaped food, if swallowed improperly, had the potential to reopen my wounds if it rubbed against the inside of my throat the wrong way.

With that in mind, you now have one very miserable Sam.

For the past couple weeks, I've consumed nothing but semi-sweet milkshakes, lukewarm bisque (nothing hot), and nutrient paste in tubes much like the stuff Nya ate on a daily basis. I sucked down the paste most of the time as it was very filling and it required little preparation for me to eat – when I had any actual appetite, that is. On the down side, it was not exactly the tastiest morsel of food I've ever perused. The substance itself was colored brown and had the consistency of refried beans. It actually tasted very similar to refried beans, come to think of it, but way more bland and bitter, which left a rather unpleasant aftertaste after every swallow.

If this kept up I was going to have to pilfer one of Nya's food tubes because she got the gourmet stuff at the markets. Hers were at least flavored. There would be that whole dextro amino-acid problem I would have to contend with eventually, but I figured that when I would reach that level of desperation, incompatible amino-acids were not going to be high on my list of problems to care about.

After choking down my swill (or half of it, as I was not all that hungry as of late), I settled in for my daily routine of parking my ass in front of the vidscreen and watching mindless programs for most of the day. Being on medical leave, I had been strongly discouraged from leaving my apartment so that left me very little to do besides read books or watch television. My lifestyle began to turn very sedentary now that I was forcibly restricted from exerting myself aside from very brief periods of exercise. It did indeed feel like I was losing brain cells from spending days on end just glued to a screen.

Despite my thoughts on the matter, becoming this lazy blob upon the couch was in fact helpful at taking my mind off my injuries. There was this almost numbing feeling that I got whenever all the muscles in my body simply relaxed, no commands from my nervous system pulsating for action. All I did was lie back and exist.

This was exactly what I was expecting to accomplish today, but Nya entered the living room from the foyer later in the morning and this time, she was not alone.

"Sam," she called out as she stepped to the side thoughtfully. "We have some visitors."

Striding into the sparse interior of the living room, Rie and Chandler looked my way and gave timid waves of their hands in greeting.

A frown was literally a second away from coldly adorning my face as well as the bitter remark that began to form on the tip of my tongue. Two weeks and this was now only the first time I was seeing these two post-accident. Why the hell had it taken them this long to visit? And why were they all dressed up? Chandler was decked out in a spiffing purple jacket and pants combo while Rie's own outfit was edgy yet elegant as denoted by her high collar and sequenced dark fabrics all held together by strips of what appeared to be leather.

However, the brief anger seeped away as well as my tunnel vision, restoring my original feelings of warmth and relief. Instead of delving deeper into my grumpiness, I found it within myself to gratefully smile – not so easy considering the amount of pain that I was in.

"Hey guys," I greeted – no trace of anger detectable. "This certainly is a surprise."

"A nice one, I hope?" Nya asked impishly.

I laughed as loudly as I could dare – which was still rather quiet now that no air caught on what remained of my vocal cords.

"A very nice one. Come on, sit down."

I beckoned to the two to join me on the couch and they complied. Nya walked around to the front at spread her hands wide.

"Can I get you two something to drink? Water? Wine?"

"Oh, no thank you, Nya," Chandler politely shook his head. "I'm good."

"Nothing for me either, thanks," Rie said. "We're not going to be staying long. Chandler's been forcibly invited to an alumnus dinner on the Presidium for the usual congregating and networking bullshit. It actually started an hour ago but he assured me that we could arrive fashionably late."

Guess that explained the outfits.

"Ick," I screwed up my face, shuddering at the mention of such an event. "There's nothing worse than attending those faux galas where all they do is beg for donations. I probably get around four calls a week from my alma mater asking if I would make a pledge to fund whatever frivolous fundraising goal they have in the pipeline."

Chandler chuckled. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm expecting as well. Which is why we're deliberately arriving late. I can't stand fake smiling and shaking hands with strangers for hours."

"Pretty much the professional equivalent of a strip club, eh? Awkward interactions followed by the whipping out of the checkbook."

Nya then looked down at me after dismally rolling her eyes. "And you, honey?"

I gave a rueful shake of my head. "No, I don't need anything, Nya." I patted the cushion next to me as a gesture that I wanted her physical presence to be close to me while I unconsciously rubbed at the scar at my neck. "Come sit down with us. It's been too long since I've talked with other people that it would be unfair for me not to share this moment."

Nya hesitated for a moment before she gracefully sat down, one arm finding its way around me as she scooted over so that our sides were touching. Trembles spiked their way across my skin – it felt good for someone to hold me and keep me steady like this. Enviro-suit or not, it was impossible not to deduce the calming emotions stemming from simple touches.

"So," Rie began, "how are you feeling, Sam? You're looking… well, it's hard to tell, but you look fine."

"Heh," I snorted. "I wish I _felt_ fine, honestly. Ah, I've got a throat that feels like it's going to tear itself completely open one of these days and implants in my eyes that are daring me to gouge them out with my own fingers. I'm on a steady diet of painkillers and medi-gel, and I'm bored out of my damn mind but otherwise I'm fine. Yourself?"

I think it must have been the way I said everything so nonchalantly that it managed to achieve the stunned reaction from my guests. It was kind of hilarious as they looked to be deciding whether it would be more appropriate to laugh or keep their expression neutral. Was that sweat coming off Chandler's brow as he made a contorted effort not to say the wrong thing?

My disarming smile finally eased the tension placed on the two as they finally realized that I was messing with them. I heard a quiet sigh make its way past Nya's vocabulator. Oh boy, she was going to make me pay for lightly torturing our friends one of these days.

"No, seriously," I waved off, "I'm managing to cope. Don't worry about it."

Rie leaned forward in concern. "Are… are you sure you're right, Sam?"

"Absolutely," I lied. "It's mostly the boredom that's getting to me. I'd march back into work if I could but, being that I work at a hospital, they tend to take medical matters such as this seriously. I'd suspect they'd forcibly wheel me out if they caught me at my desk too early."

"You're right about that. They don't like to play around."

"How's the job treating you without me there to annoy you?"

Rie shrugged, yellow eyes glazing over in disinterest as her mandible twitched once. "Same as what you're going through now: boring. Just sheet after sheet of paperwork that needs to be filed in addition to all the prelims and vetting that I have to oversee for the upcoming surgeries. It's a real pain, if you ask me."

"You want pain, try getting these," I said as I indicated at my newest "additions" to my body – the scars, the cybernetics. "I'm starting to see why everyone gets cybernetic implants earlier in life. The coping period is pretty much hell for anyone unused to this sort of procedure – plus you have more time to actually forget all the agony as your life goes on if you get them while you're six."

"You've never had cybernetics in you before?" Chandler asked.

"I do, actually. Got a standard enhancement in my arm to project my omni-tool without a forearm band and I also have standard cybernetics laced in my organs to help facilitate a longer life like all humans, but nothing too out of the ordinary or too invasive like the ones I just got."

The cybernetics I had listed had actually already been on my person when I got unexpectedly thrown into this universe, so I really never had any recollection of when I had received them. I had found the exact details of my so-called enhancements through the detailed medical records from the hospital, so if I had gotten extra implants my current consciousness had not been witness to bear that sort of pain, thankfully.

Rie was shaking her head as she clenched her hands together. "I just would have thought that the hospital could have cloned you some new eyes rather than implant you with the cybernetics. What they did to you seems rather pointless. Why _not_ grow some flash-cloned eyes for you to swap out?"

"That's because cloning organs is far more expensive than cybernetics," Nya piped up before I could answer, to my surprise. "It also takes a month for fully viable tissue samples to become ready to be transplanted, but organs that have been flash cloned, even though they can be made ready in a day, are prone to problems. Flash-cloned organs' cells rapidly deteriorate a twenty times faster than regular cells due to the rapid decay of nucleic acid bonds – they grow quickly but die quickly. Their life span can be measured anywhere from hours to a couple days. They literally cannot reproduce faster than they die off, which is why flash-cloning is considered to be a last resort in medical procedures."

I blinked, amazed and very much impressed. "That's… correct, Nya," I mumbled. "Where the heck did you learn that from?"

"Oh, I skimmed one of your trade magazines that you leave in the bathroom for light reading," she replied lightly.

"Huh. How about that."

A sudden burst of coughing suddenly rose up from within me, wet and hoarse. I clutched at my chest as I powered through each rough scrape upon my throat – someone was rubbing the inside of my esophagus with sandpaper, I swear. Everyone stopped what they were doing and their various expressions as they looked at me ranged from concerned to alarmed.

"I'm fine," I shakily tried to assure everyone, but another nasty cough proved me a liar. "No, really, I'm good."

Rie and Chandler glanced at the other in worry. "He's not susceptible to any germs, is he?" Rie asked Nya.

Nya fidgeted in her seat as she stole a furtive look at me. "I'm not really sure. He's been coughing like this ever since he got back home. His immune system is not what's compromised, but we've been taking it easy regardless. In fact, he's probably overdue for his medi-gel inhaler anyway."

Our guests rose, looking visibly uncomfortable. It was probably due to the fact that no one really enjoys visiting their wounded or sickly friends, even with intentions as good as theirs. It merely serves to draw attention upon their own good health which plants the notion in their mind that it seems radically unfair to appear so well while someone they knew was visibly struggling. Granted, it was not like I was slowly dying of cancer, but truly, no one likes to see their friends hurting.

As Nya went to go fetch my inhaler, I stood to bid Rie and Chandler goodbye. Chandler and I shared a firm handshake and Rie gave me a careful hug.

From his pocket, Chandler passed me a simple white envelope. "We made you a card. There's five hundred credits towards the e-shop in there. We figured you could find something there to help occupy yourself while you get better."

"Guys… I…" I fiddled with the card as I was suddenly filled with gratitude, touched at the kindness of my friends. "You really didn't need to do this for me."

Rie shook her head defiantly. "Nope. Wrong there, Sam. We did, because we wanted to remind you that we're with you every step of the way. You're going to be well again and you're going to get through this all right."

"I don't think I deserve you two," I blurted out in astonishment, which made the two smile genuinely.

Nya came back from the kitchen, inhaler in tow. "You sure we can't convince you guys to stay a bit longer?"

"No, we'd better be going otherwise our absence will be suspect," Chandler said. "Take care you, guys. And Nya, be sure to keep an eye on your husband. We all know that he's the most stubborn out of all of us."

"Aw, go to hell, Chandler," I laughed.

Nya elbowed me in the ribs for that, but chuckled just the same. "Will do. He's not going anywhere until I deem him ready. Have fun at the dinner!"

Waving goodbye to the departing couple, I playfully mouthed ' _Save me_ ' to them, which elicited another distant round of laughs. As soon as the door slid shut on them, the warmth on my face began to cool a bit.

Whatever grievances I had at their delayed visit seemed petty and trivial the more time went on. I fiddled with the sealed envelope in my hand, becoming less and less stalwart at being angry towards Rie and Chandler for not visiting me sooner. At least they had come, bearing a rather expensive gift no less. I just needed to take a breath, calm down, and learn to forgive a bit for once.

Nya peered towards me and steadily placed a hand on my shoulder. "They wanted to visit you sooner," she said, demonstrating her uncanny ability to read my mind, "but they were busy for the past couple weeks. Rie was all tied up with this celebrity's rehabilitation and Chandler was on Illiuim looking after his ailing mother. She has dementia."

"But… why didn't they simply explain themselves to me?" I asked as I took out a pill bottle from my pocket at the same time I took a deep breath from the inhaler, wincing slightly as the medi-gel stung as it traveled further and further down my esophagus. "If they had good reasons for taking this long, I would have understood."

"I suppose they were afraid that you might not see it that way," Nya sighed as she watched me pop a pill of paracetamol dry after depositing the inhaler down on a nearby stand. "They did visit you in the hospital – you were unconscious at that point – but they talked with me about their schedule conflicts and how regretful they were for having to miss all this time. I actually was the one who recommended the gift that they gave you and every single day they wanted me to send them updates on your health. They really were telling the truth when they said that they were with you every step of the way."

Swallowing the pill was particularly painful because I was too dumb to even think of using water to help wash it down my throat. My injuries were loving that, let me tell you. Grinding my teeth in response to the pain, or more from the absolute shame I felt from initially wanting to act like a jerk to my friends, I slowly glanced over at Nya.

"I've been out of the hospital for ten days. I've had my entire world turned upside down in a matter of seconds multiple times over my life. I've been on the brink of falling into complete depression and the first thing that came to my mind when I saw Rie and Chandler in this room today was the sheer anger at the notion that I might have been an afterthought to them after all this time! No explanation – nothing! I was fighting with my rage the entire time they were there and they thought I would be mad at them if they provided _perfectly reasonable explanations_ for their absences?! Fuck… they could have avoided all this drama had they been forthcoming. How could they have been so _stupid?!_ "

I tossed the pill bottle away in a huff where it simply clattered against the wall rather unspectacularly. I would have liked to imagine that my gaze could cut steel as a way of compensating for this smoldering agony that waited like a preying animal, biding its time until the opportune moment to strike.

Perceptive to my attitude, Nya walked over and picked up the pill bottle where it lay and set it down on the shiny coffee table in front of me. "I don't know, but I can understand why they might have balked at telling you," she said softly. "Sam, think about it, the both of them were caught between very difficult choices. Rie had her career on the line and Chandler's mother nearly died. In contrast, you were stable and weren't going anywhere for a while, but they might not have known how to properly communicate that to you, or if you would take it as well as they could hope."

Nya's voice was dripping with regret as she shed her emotional baggage, saddened at the whole sorry affair, which served to relentlessly spear me with guilt and cow me further. Invisible stings tied our gazes together in the laconism of the room and, for but an instant, a slow fountain of despair began to rise up within me – almost tangible like bile – at what a jerk I had been for thinking such horrible things about people that cared about me, but then my throat cleared at the last moment and the lump receded. I began to breathe normally again.

As anticipated, I broke the eye contact first. It was then did I notice that I was sweating a bit.

"I know," I submitted, suddenly feeling drained. "I just wish that they would have said anything… just something. You have no idea how close I was to becoming an all-out prick in their presence. I was toying with the idea of forcibly making them explain themselves to me… but I didn't."

"Why didn't you?" Nya asked, voice ever soothing.

A snort came from my nose in a degrading manner. "Because… for all my bluster… I don't like being an asshole."

My wife crossed her arms as she now appraised me sympathetically. "You're in more pain then you're letting on, right?"

"That obvious?"

"Honey, you've been shaking slightly for the past half hour and your hands are clenched so tight that it looks like you're going to pop a few tendons."

I looked down, suddenly self-conscious, and found that Nya was right. My hands were indeed balled up into fists so firmly that they were nearly bone-white from having clenched out all the blood. I relaxed my hands and slowly stretched out my fingers, my appendages now singing in relief as they were able to extend out fully once more.

"Damn," I simply muttered.

Nya sat down beside me and took one of my hands to hold in her own. She interlaced her fingers with mine as she began to rub the underside of my hand with her free limb. "I know this is painful for you, and I'm sorry that I'm not able to understand it fully, but I don't like seeing you in such a state where you're nearly lashing out at everyone. You have friends – _family_ – that do worry about you, you know."

"I do know, but it's like you pointed out, how can you comprehend this pain? What those chemicals didn't ruin, these implants have. My voice sounds like I tried to swallow a CB radio and my eyes are completely infested with these synthetic materials that I'm having a hard time regarding them as entirely organic anymore. I just… I can't help but think that there should have been another way to save me without having to put me under the knife like this. I wish they would have at least _asked_ me for my permission…"

The quarian's three fingers crushed my own as the anchor by my side provided her own style of stability.

"They couldn't ask you," Nya said, "because you were unconscious at the time of the attack to the time they operated on you. They had to implant you, Sam, because you would have lost more than what you have now if they had waited. You might not have been able to keep your eyes or worse, you very well may have died. Besides, implants are not all bad. Look at me, you know how many I have in my body? More than you ever will accumulate in _your_ lifetime, that's for sure."

"Yeah, but you got yours early on. I had to receive mine later in life."

Slowly, Nya brought my hand to the rubber neck seal of her enviro-suit, she guided my hand where to feel, delicately tracing a line up from her collar to her jaw. "You've seen the faint lines under my skin that look like veins, only thinner? Implants, all of them. I have to have them, otherwise I could die. I have so many that I'm still not able to keep track of all of them to the point where a good portion of my body is cybernetic. They may not pain me, but they do remind me of how I'm limited every single day. If anything, I should be jealous of you."

I swallowed as my fingers still continued to gently brush up Nya's throat. This was uncharted territory for me. I had never inquired to the specifics about Nya's implants before because it seemed like a very personal thing to ask about. It certainly sounds stupid when the fact that this topic should have already been broached due to our marriage to the other, but I guess the mentality surrounding the subject had kept it taboo in my mind.

Maybe it was time to change that and dispel this haze. No secrets between spouses.

"What do they do, your cybernetics?"

"Mostly just boring stuff like my haptic interface and facilitating handshake protocols between my body and my enviro-suit. They're all just designed to connect with one another in order to keep me alive or to provide supplemental support to tissues in risk from any adverse effects. It's like a software patch, but for a living organism."

Nya lifted up a flap of fabric from her suit at her left shoulder, exposing three circular ports colored a dull black. "These are what we call our direct access miters. They are based on a universal design which allows quarians to easily receive medication to counteract any reactions in case of a suit breach. That's why quarians phased out injections through needles to our bare skin, it's just a simple matter of introducing the proper drugs for our ailments now. All we do to receive any pharmaceuticals is to simply attach a tube into one of these ports, and the drug is effortlessly dispersed into our blood stream."

"Lucky," I said, secretly rather envious of the fact that Nya never had to get injections. Even as a medical professional, I hated receiving my yearly flu shot. Needles never failed to freak me out. Go figure.

The flap of fabric covered the miters and Nya took my hands again, raising them up to her visor and indicating her face beyond it with a simple tap of my finger upon her covering. "Also, you're not the only one who's received upgrades for their eyes, you know."

"You're kidding. You too?"

Nya nodded. "Cybernetics. Same as you. Only I can't remember a moment not having them, but they do help with my night vision and I have a link between the implants and my visor to have my heads-up-display projected from my retinas instead of inside the visor itself. A little more substantial in features than yours, I'd wager, but the level of integration is probably the same between us."

Her glowing silver eyes peered back at my blue-gray ones, but I could find no evidence of any synthetic tampering in her gaze. Nya was not lying, she would never lie about this, but if she truly had the same synthetic implants in her eyes as I did in mine and she was not suffering from them, then surely I could make it through this moment of discomfort just fine.

If anything, it would only serve to bring us closer.

She then guided my hands to her ribs, making sure to place each of my palms on both sides of her body. Her rib cage slowly puffed out with each breath, a careful yet tempered rhythm. It did not take me long to realize what Nya was conveying to me.

"Your lungs? They're…?"

"Not completely," Nya admitted, "but there's definitely some augmentation. Quarians spend the majority of their lives aboard spaceships – or spent, I should say. The effects of artificial gravity on our bodies does not replicate exactly the same effects as being on a planet with actual gravity. Even though I spent the first few years of my life on a small colony moon, I've been on ships for almost as long as I can remember. Being in that kind of environment tends to screw up our bodies a bit. We fatigue a lot easier when exposed to an environment with stronger gravity, and our organs are not conditioned to work at their peak level when in-atmosphere or aboard a station with more sophisticated artificial gravity generators."

"So your cybernetics work with your organs as a kind of auxiliary power generator?"

Nya shrugged. "Kind of. I've got rudimentary tech in my lungs that keeps them from deflating too much from spending my time in higher gravity – it keeps my breathing level. There's so much stuff in me just for the purposes of regulating my normal body processes. Tech for each organ, take your pick. Why, there's even a whole mess of stuff _here_."

A light grip on my wrist led my hand to her chest. Nya's hands pressed my own appendage against her body, holding it just slightly over her breast near her center of mass, so that the vibrations from the _one, one-two_ beat of her heart could impact themselves upon me.

"Try not to see these implants as a curse, Sam," Nya's breathy voice barely wafted from her vocabulator. "They may seem like a burden, but they can do tremendous good as well. I know that this has been painful to you and although I cannot remember what it was like when I received my cybernetics, I understand what you are going through. If you still hurt, please try to think of me in those moments because I know that you've been through worse, which means that you're going to get through this just fine. _I – know – it_."

Sitting there, hand to her heart, emotions spilling out in a flood, I smiled as I finally understood. When she saw the smile grace my lips, I could literally feel the silent breath of relief that Nya took and even imagined to myself the similar grin that was now upon her features as well.

Miraculously, the pain began to dissipate.

"I'll try," I promised her.

* * *

The treadmill's only sound was the slight whining sound as the trodden belt was continuously yanked around and around at high speeds. What was producing the most noise in the rec room was actually my wheezing as I was trying my damnedest to get back up to my usual exercise routine, starting with the goal of achieving my previous jogging speed and time.

At this point I had the speed down pat. The only trouble was going to come from me trying to maintain that speed for a good half hour. So far it had only been seven and a half minutes and I was already sweating up a storm, not to mention the breathing complications plaguing my lungs. This was certainly going to end well, right?

About an hour and a half after Rie and Chandler had left I had resumed slouching around the apartment some more, nothing on my agenda, before a dose of inspiration finally hit me. No longer content at being a loafer and stemming from a desire to prove that I did not have to live such a sedentary lifestyle, I made the choice to seek out a temporary purpose through the form of exercise. Get my blood pumping, get active, get healthy, that sort of thing. Maybe it would also serve as a good outlet to rid myself of all this pent-up frustration I've been experiencing as of late. Exercise was terrific at neutralizing stress.

Guess my efforts appeared to be working because the only thing that I was feeling was, not my irrational hatred to exterminate all of mankind (doesn't everyone feel that at some point?), but rather my slow asphyxiation as my lungs clamored for breath. Man, my cardio was crap. I was not even exerting myself too hard! I only skipped out on a couple weeks of workout days, how could I possibly regress so quickly?

Fighting through the gray splotches that were starting to appear in my vision, I shakily wiped my sweaty forehead as I attempted to power through. This had to be temporary, right? If I just got back into the exercise groove then everything would start to even out. My vision would clear and my lungs would work again. Surely I could not be this out of shape, could I?

This hypothesis brought to you by a man with a doctorate.

Apparently I really was being naïve to the point of being a dumbass because, in the middle of a stride, my leg suddenly gave out on me, causing me to stumble on the treadmill. The device, sensing that my pace had stopped to a halt, gradually wound down its speed automatically, but not before its remaining momentum sent me sliding off the mat and down onto the floor heavily, making me yell out as my knees throbbed from the fall.

" _What are you doing in there, trashing the room?!_ " I heard Nya call out in the distance.

My only response was a pitiful groan as I rolled over on my back. My tank top was already soaked through from my sweat and I started shivering as a chill wafted over me. My implants were no longer hurting thanks to the painkillers I had consumed a while back, but there was this ragged feeling in my throat every time I gulped in air. It was like I was not getting enough oxygen to my lungs, which caused this exhaustion to occur in the first place. A side effect from my surgeries perhaps, or maybe I had gone into my workout routine a bit more intense than I should have.

Too tired to even imagine myself getting up, I was perfectly content with lying on the floor, just waiting for the faintest iota of pure will to slither its way into my muscles so that I could pathetically crawl on out of here and into my bed. God, a nap sounded brilliant right now. Yet, because I was lazy, I felt no inclination to do anything and relegated myself to simply stare up at the overhead lights.

I did not spend much time with that because Nya's head suddenly popped into view as she stood over my prone body. Huh, I had not even heard her enter the room.

"You okay?" she asked me.

I blinked slowly, as if in a daze. "Would you believe me if I said that I was dead?"

The sigh that Nya admitted was explosive as her exasperation with me quickly peaked. "Don't you start with this again."

"Eh…" I gave a tired smile. "Got the reaction I wanted out of you, though."

"Hilarious." Nya did not sound amused. "But really, are you all right?" She knelt down and place a three-fingered hand upon my forehead. " _Keelah_ ," she exclaimed. "You're burning up."

I desperately clutched at her wrist. "I'm… I'm fine. I just need to lie down a bit. Can you help me to the bedroom?"

To her everlasting credit, Nya did not hesitate at my request. She immediately complied as she threw one of my arms over her neck and used her strong legs to lift herself up, carrying my weight along with her. I was then able to maneuver my limp legs underneath me so that I could haltingly walk and not have Nya drag all of my dead weight across the apartment.

Once we reached the bedroom, Nya turned and gently deposited me down upon the bed but before I could flop down on my back in relief, Nya grabbed at my damp shirt and began to pull it off, the cloth ruffling my hair as the collar rubbed closely against it. She used the shirt to wipe at my sweaty face, making sure that all the natural oils my skin had perspired were all soaked up, while she was probably mentally scolding me for going for a run so soon after major surgery.

Nya breathed out heavily as she watched me lie on the bed. She made sure to pay close attention to my irregular breathing, while her face scanned all over my body anxiously for any signs that I was suffering.

"I don't like seeing you like this," she merely said, her arms about to cross themselves over her chest.

I did not reply. I had nothing to offer her, no defense to conjure. I was practically laid bare on this bed, rendered to my most pathetic form and weak as a newborn baby.

Nya walked forward and slowly spread a hand upon my chest. "I just want you to be happy, Sam. That's all I want."

"That's… something that… I want too," I agreed. "But that's nothing if _you're_ not there to share my happiness."

My wife shifted her weight from foot to foot and briefly looked down, almost like she felt guilty for something. Timidly, she returned her gaze to mine, her fingers tangled within themselves as she bent down a bit towards me.

"I think…" she said, "I think that I know how to make that work."

"I would like to know, Nya. Please… I want to know."

"All right."

A cool breeze from the ceiling fan swept over me and I shivered in my lethargic state. A series of clicks followed by a faint hiss signaled that Nya had removed her visor, quickly affirming that fact when her face hovered over mine in concern while I laid down on the bed. The rest of her helmet and hood had been pushed aside and removed, allowing her short black hair to dangle freely. A sympathetic smile tugging at her lips, I barely had enough time to return the gesture before she lowered herself down to provide a soft kiss.

The simple act was enough to provide monumental relief that no amount of painkillers could hope to replicate. My shivering vanished immediately and I surrendered myself to the loving attention that my wife was giving me. Funny, my headache was already starting to dissipate and my eyes were not feeling quite so scratchy.

Nya did not remain at my head for very long. She quickly moved down my body, leaving a trail of kisses as she went. The scar at my throat was even subject to her attention, as she place a gentle kiss upon the milky white flesh that marred my skin. When I felt her lips upon my stomach, the touch of her fingers upon the beltline of my shorts was introduced as she slowly began to tug the clothing off me. I raised my hips slightly to allow the shorts to be easily removed, now knowing what she meant by "helping" me. Safe to say that I was fully on board with whatever plan Nya had in mind for me.

With a slightly amused smirk, I raised my head to meet my wife's eyes. Lovely as always. She was breathing heavily, mouth slightly open, overcome by a desire to impart pleasure upon the person she loved most, to bring good memories to overpower the bad.

"Are… are you ready?" Nya whispered, seeking approval.

I gave a singular nod, touched by her selflessness. "Go right ahead."

That was the cue for me to lie back and relax as I felt Nya close in on me. I looked up at the ceiling, studying the intricate and tiny imperfections etched in the seemingly spotless metal surface. I was already beginning to lose myself in abstract thought until I felt Nya's hand upon my skin near my lower regions, the contact almost making me jump.

And then I felt her mouth upon me.

She went slowly, passionately, that I could hear low noises of satisfaction emanate from her as she proceeded in her tender actions. I murmured contently and gave a few sighs as Nya attended to me with her mouth and tongue, using her hand to create extra stimulation as she went. When the warmth of her mouth would invariably lift off me so that she could utilize only her hand to arouse me, I too would lift my head to find Nya staring intently back at me, no words of assurance needed to understand that she was doing this for me, because I was hurting so much.

This swell of love in the face of such frightful wounds overwhelmed me and left me breathless on the bed. With a shaky laugh, I broke eye contact first so that I could resume staring upwards, but now able to jump into my fantasies easier than before. There was plenty of inspiration available at hand.

While Nya continued to fellate me, my thoughts turned inward towards myself. My breathing was deeper, yet the pain from my throat had practically fled at this point. My eyes were no longer watering from irritation, and the unbelievable exhaustion that had overcome me just minutes ago had seeped from my muscles, filling them with energy once more.

What an energy it was.

With a long intake of breath, I sat up so quickly I had the dim worry that I might burst something from my quick actions. Nya lifted her mouth off me the second I was no longer laying down, her expression flitting into concern.

"Sam?" she asked timidly. "Did… was I hurting you?"

My fingers found her cheeks, lightly grazing the thin scar on the side of her face while the grin on mine became broader, warm with affection.

"Far from it," I assured her before I kissed her hard.

Nya's muffled sound of surprise quickly escalated into a moan of pleasure while my hands began to roam her body. Quickly, I pulled her onto the bed and twisted so that I was now lying atop her, our lips still intermingled in our fierce kissing. My tongue found hers in a surge of primal lust and we rocked back and forth in a gentle dance atop the mattress, entangled in a ritual not just congruous to one species alone.

As we broke from one of these kisses, Nya's cheeks flushed as she hurried to speak. "Sh-shouldn't you be taking it easy, Sam? Your health…"

"I don't care right now," I disregarded as I kissed at her neck, lips trailing at the thin lines of her implants hidden beneath her flesh. My fingers found the seals of her enviro-suit and fumbled at working it off her. This was too important. My wife had shown me this kindness by making me happy during what had been a trying moment. I _had_ to return the favor.

"But… but…" Nya tried to say but failed as my attention upon her proved to be too overwhelming. "Ah… damn it," she bemoaned quietly as she touched at a control on her suit regardless, causing the electric weave in the lining of the material of her suit to loosen and become baggy around her frame. The two of us were easily able to extricate her from her malleable prison and we did so with wild abandon as we frantically tugged at the covering and yanked it off to reveal Nya's slim form to me.

I took no time in admiring the nudity of my wife – although it was still very much a turn-on seeing her in this state – as I crawled up for one more kiss, to which she reciprocated fully with a gleeful squeak. Gray skin against pink, exotic yet familiar. Normality. Before the two of us could let time slip away from us while making out, I quickly positioned myself further down Nya's body (after kissing the scar at her stomach as part of our ritual), and rested myself between her legs. My lips made a trail up her inner thighs, my fingers gently tracing the lines of her veins and thinly veiled cybernetics. Nya's toes curled as she reclined upon the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed, anticipating what I was about to do, her brain already intoxicated upon the dopamine that had overloaded her senses, slowing her thoughts. From her position, it was easy for her to look down upon me as I edged my head closer and closer to her womanhood.

Now _my_ eyes sought affirmation as I was but centimeters away, the inherent danger of my future actions quite conveniently lost upon me. Breathily, Nya could only nod, her fingers brushing my temples as she prepared for the joyous feelings that were about to be imparted onto her. Green lights across the board, as they say.

I knew that I must not disappoint her tonight.

With permission now granted, I closed the final few millimeters and gently placed my mouth upon her. Nya's head lolled back as she emitted a sigh of delight, her fingers already beginning to dig into my scalp. I closed my eyes and settled into a slow rhythm, alternating between using my lips and tongue to pleasure her where she was most sensitive – as where one would find on both a quarian and a human female. The parallels between body structures and their functions almost seemed suspect in its convenience, but it certainly meant that nothing would effectively be lost in translation when it came to being physically intimate with another race.

Apparently due to all the prior experience I've had as a human (and a doctor) in my knowledge of anatomy, to Nya it translated to her that I was quite a master in the sack – a thought that she had previously vocalized to me several times over. Not entirely true as I just knew how to please her best, but my ego was not going to let such a compliment get past me. When it comes to such matters, humble I am not.

While I buried my head in between Nya's legs, my own passion fueling the intensity of my care, Nya was moaning loudly as her hips rocked back and forth in time to the established tempo. Her belly, damp with sweat, puffed out with her deep inhalations. My own arousal was intensifying more and more as I listened to Nya's noises of her happiness, not to mention the splendid view of her body that I was receiving from this position.

Nya seemed to sense that I was staring up at her and she tilted her head down to flash me a warm smile, laced with love. Her brow was sweaty and her mouth was slightly open from having to take in extra air – she looked so sweet, so beautiful. With a tight grin, she began to squeeze her breasts, perhaps to enhance the pleasurable sensations in addition to my oral ministrations, or perhaps to tease me by flaunting her undeniably feminine curves to make that primal side of my brain override everything and to take her in a fit of lust.

Ordinarily, such obvious tactics would not have such an effect of making me lose control of my inhibitions like that, but things were a bit different. I had not been physically intimate with Nya in a while, my injuries had done a sufficient job in trampling my mental state to the point that this entire encounter might as well have brought me back to life, and Nya had just showcased to me how much she cared about me with her erotic act that it now had me thinking that it was not fair to make her wait any longer in our foreplay, to tease her like this.

I needed to reciprocate. Now.

Disengaging from my position, I crawled up to Nya and mashed my lips against hers so quickly that she could hardly make sense of anything in her addled state. She certainly liked it though, as evidenced by her sensual nibbling of her teeth upon my bottom lip. My hand slid up from her hip slowly, maddeningly, which caused Nya to grunt in frustration and to grab at my wrist so that she could place my hand upon her breast. I groped at the soft flesh, hearing the wonderful noises that my wife emitted from my actions. My thumb rubbed at her nipple and I gently kneaded her breast, making sure to provide all the stimulation she could want to her sensitive erogenous zones.

I would like to think that the two of us knew what would happen next. If it had been Nya's goal to eventually reach this point tonight, then she succeeded. If not, then it would prove to be such a big miscalculation and a massive error based on actions that I had already made.

While I was kissing Nya and pressing her down on the bed, I could feel the shudder run up her body, tightening her muscles as I entered her. She gasped loudly, her hands immediately wrapping around my back as we became joined, the transition occurring relatively easily in comparison to the near-disastrous first time back on Earth years ago.

"Ah…" she tried to say in the middle of a cry, "…oh, Sam…"

"Nya," I only gritted out as I used my arms to support my upper torso as we started to make love. No longer kissing her, I screwed my eyes shut as I let all my concentration flow downward, into my pelvic movements which were gradually increasing in their intervals. Already sweat was beading on my face, dripping downward as I strived to keep myself under some semblance of control despite the fact that my current pace could practically be considered fucking at this point for it was getting to be way more intense and quick than the two of us have been used to.

Nya made little " _uh_ " sounds every time I thrust into her, too deep in her love-drunk state to make any other intelligible noises. Her face was flushed, eyes closed in bliss, and she hooked her legs around my waist, her feet locking themselves together, to provide easier access.

" _Yes_ …" she finally whispered in between her overwhelmed gasps. " _Yes… yes… yes…_ oh… _yes_ … Sam, please… _more_ …"

Damn it all. I was already nearing my peak. Between her wonderful voice urging me on and the sheer physical pleasure that was being derived from our sex, I had no chance of making this last much longer. I wanted to slow down, to cease for just a moment, to simply halt this needlessly fierce intercourse and provide tenderness to Nya in the form of gentle touches and kisses. Yet… I kept going. I was so focused on giving Nya ultimate pleasure right off the bat that I did not feel like losing my rhythm, to stop when I knew she was so close.

With a strangled curse, I forced one of my eyes open a crack, simply out of curiosity. That would immediately prove to be a mistake.

What I saw underneath me was perfection. I saw my beautiful wife, her face awash with a transcendent joy, the most vivid display of emotion that I could possibly imagine from her. I saw her petite breasts bouncing slightly to the pace of our lovemaking, her stomach trembling as she sucked in breath after breath, and where our bodies met as we thrashed around in the throes of seeking the pinnacle of love's physical manifestations. Something locked up in my throat – and I was not entirely sure if my injuries had anything to do with it – while a similar reaction surged in my loins, stiffening all my muscles and putting me in a paralytic state as I realized that this moment, the most important moment, had come _entirely too soon_.

" _Fu_ …" I managed to get out as I desperately tried with all my strength to take back the inevitable, to somehow pull everything back, but this was a battle that I had apparently been destined to lose. Each spasm of my body was a rebuke, a taunt, a scathing insult upon my very being. I felt sick, disgusted, and ashamed as I continued to lose myself inside of Nya.

I was not furious at myself for having to come like this. No, not at all. I was furious at myself because, with just one glance at Nya, who was still shakily taking in air, her limbs trembling helplessly, her pelvis still thrusting against mine, I knew immediately what I had done, that I had failed at what I had set out to do.

Wordlessly, the magnitude of my error was only beginning to weigh down on me. It was that, in spite of my self-proclaimed goal, it had all been for naught as Nya's climax had been _unmet_ , the moment having been lost, slipped away in my shame _._

You selfish, selfish, prick. You asshole. Wasn't the point of all this to make _her_ come? Not _you!_ You were never even part of the fucking equation! And now you go and bust your nut without even having given your wife an orgasm when she was clearly intent on providing _you_ one, in case you forgot! What the hell is _wrong_ with you?!

"Fuck," I spat, a trail of spittle running down my chin – a remnant of the uncontrolled act.

With a three-fingered hand, Nya wiped her brow timidly. "S-Sam…?" she whispered, the ghost of a smile quickly morphing into a frown as she was surprised from my savage outburst.

"Fuck," I seethed once more, but this time I could not control myself. Furiously, with animal strength, I clenched my fist and slammed it hard down on the mattress, shaking the bed and causing Nya to yelp frightfully.

"Sam!" Nya trembled.

I continued to beat on the bed several times in rapid succession, well away from Nya. " _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_ " I muttered with each blow, so incensed at my obliviousness that I needed to get all this rage out – away from me. The sheets rippled with each strike, a whoosh of air surging from each blow. I surmise that I would have continued to assault the poor bed for the entire night had Nya not grabbed me forcefully and hugged my head to her chest, restricting all violent movements within me that yearned to express themselves.

Trapped in Nya's embrace, I could only tremble in frustration as my failure clung to me. A few tears formed in the corner of my eyes, causing them to become itchy once again. Goddamn cybernetics. I angrily wiped my eyes as I rested my body fully upon my wife while she softly stroked my hair and made cooing noises to comfort me. I listened to that familiar _one, one-two_ beat of her heart, finding comfort in its unceasing thudding, as well as the gentle kisses Nya applied to the top of my head.

"I'm… I'm… _aw, shit_ … I'm sorry," I whispered pathetically. "Nya… I'm so-,"

"Enough of that, now," she shushed me, but her tone was not meant to rebuke. It was meant to reassure.

"Nya, _please_ , I'm sorr-,"

One of her hands placed itself over my cheek. "I said…" her voice shushed, "…it's okay. It's all right, Sam. It's all right."

I bitterly sighed as I oriented myself to look at her. Even in my embarrassment, I still felt that I could look her in the eye. It was the least that she deserved.

"It's _not_ all right! Don't pretend that I'm not a massive prick for doing that to you!"

"Why would I ever think that?" she genuinely looked confused. "What, because you went too early tonight? That's perfectly normal, Sam. I'm a _quarian_ and, even though I might not have much experience with this sort of thing, I know that it's not unusual for this to happen."

"No, it's because that I was being unfair to you! You started to go down on me because you genuinely wanted me to feel better, to make me happy – and you did! But I was greedy, I wanted more and I could not control myself while I was trying to convince myself that I was reciprocating for you! I did not want your selflessness to go… unrewarded. I just wanted to show you that I realized how much you cared about me and that… that I wanted to return the favor."

Nya lightly chuckled and shook her head, her face leaning in to kiss my damp brow.

"Oh, you poor human. Always overthinking these things, huh?"

"Nya…"

"Sam," Nya interrupted. "I did not do this with the intention that we would actually _have_ sex tonight, you do realize that? The fact that we got this far was simply a bonus and I'm not all that disappointed at the outcome, actually. Maybe it never occurred to you that getting _you_ off was my only goal tonight, hmm? So things ended earlier than expected, big deal. I made you happy for a little bit, which was all that mattered in the long run."

It was almost surreal at how the situation could rapidly pivot upon its head by using the right combination of words – the _truth_ , in point of fact. There was not one hint of a fib that I could detect in Nya's voice. Not one. She very well meant what she said, which was the part that struck me. I was about to collapse gratefully (yet carefully) upon her with all the relief that I could exhibit, when all of a sudden, I felt my stomach rumble as a knot began to twist up within me.

No.

Not again.

Eyes wide, I frantically pushed myself off the bed and on my feet, hunched over while my hands grabbed at my gut in a futile effort to stem the steadily spreading pain. Like before, the twisting sensation of a knife being rotated in my lower cavity sent blinding agony up my spine and into my brain, springing forth stinging tears. The door to the bathroom blurred and I groped my way forward, suddenly dizzy.

"Sam!" I heard Nya gasp out behind me in panic. "Your medication!"

That was a particularly useless outburst to my ears. Medication for what? My handling of Nya's dextro amino-acids in my stomach or the medi-gel inhaler that I used for my throat? Which one?! In any case, I had no time to consider it any longer because I had reached the toilet just in time for me to repeat the miserable process of throwing up – which I did with a rather disgusting gusto.

While I was in the process of puking my guts up, I heard the pitter-patter of Nya's bare feet upon the onyx floor. Seconds later, her hands met my back, smoothing over my skin to alleviate the rather unpleasant sensations caused by my stupidity. When would I ever learn? I waited for her to chastise me for my foolishness in forgetting to take my allergy medication in order to inoculate me against foreign amino acid rejection, but she said nothing, letting the silence fill in the blanks in her stead.

In the middle of a lull, I weakly turned my head away from the toilet. Nya's face was heavy with concern and her hands now stroked my head, massaging my scalp to provide relief. She had thrown her thick robe about her, wisely covering herself up for this decidedly un-erotic moment. Feebly mustering a smile before the next wave hit, I coughed and ducked back in to resume my punishment for my idiocy.

Minutes later, I gasped and heaved as the gag reflex finally ran its course. Eyes shut, I hung my head into the bowl some more as I savored the reprieve. However, my throat felt raw and ragged, there seemed to be a itching fire that had spread to every inch of my gullet, and there was this taste of iron in my mouth that throttled me and terrified me to my core once I figured out exactly what it was.

"Oh… _keelah_ , Sam," I heard Nya gasp in horror.

Alarmed, I forced my eyes open and quickly found myself subject to the searing color of red. Red all within the toilet, coating the blinding porcelain surface.

Blood. _My_ blood.

I hiccoughed and dark red drops mixed with thick spittle were expelled from my mouth, splashing into the water below. The salty taste of my blood sank itself into my tongue, overwhelming me with its sharp flavor. It dripped from me, crimson beads swollen and full. The color swirled in the basin, distracting me with its eerily hypnotic dance.

It was my throat. My throat was where the blood was coming from and I knew how. The weakened lining of my esophagus had been completely ravaged when I had regurgitated my stomach acids, the strong liquid having eaten away at the weak flesh. The doctors at the hospital had warned me against consuming acidic items for fear that it could damage my already ruined throat and stomach acid just so happened to be a substance that was, by its very name, acidic. Hell, its purpose was to denature proteins, for Christ's sake! It even contained hydrochloric acid, a very dangerous substance to expose to just the skin of humans! And I just exposed my throat to it!

God, no wonder it looked like someone had severed an artery in here.

Dimly, I knew I had to stop the bleeding. All of this blood that I had already lost could certainly not be good for me. It streamed down my chin, probably making it look like I had tried to bite someone's heart out. I bet I looked disgusting, but my appearance was not at the forefront of my mind right now – just this enormous amount of blood that was still dribbling from me in my exhausted state.

"My…" I mumbled thickly. "Got to get my…"

Before I could finish the sentence, I felt a rubber seal fit itself around my mouth as a gray hand guided it into place. With a click of a button being depressed and a hiss of gas, I uttered an unintelligible noise as the medi-gel gas was sucked down my throat from the inhaler, already feeling the stinging effects as the medication went to work at repairing the damage. It honestly felt like tiny ants were biting every square inch of my throat, but not enough to cause me pain so much as irritation.

I coughed in response to the gas, emitting a small globule of blood-riddled spit, but that was all. Eventually, Nya pulled the inhaler away from me, leaving me to lie down upon the floor, my head in her lap, while the medi-gel continued to knit at the ragged and ruined flesh my stomach acids had dissolved.

My breathing was clearing up, becoming less cloggy. The bleeding had ceased at this point, all my blood having been flushed down the toilet by now courtesy of Nya. But micro-tremors were jittering throughout my body, mostly a reaction of shock to this sort of trauma. The medi-gel would help with that too, but I was clearly not all right from throwing up. Hard to believe that such a normal body reaction could produce such macabre reactions in a person.

"Sam, hold on," Nya said as she moved to get up. "I'll call for a paramedic."

Numbly, I reached up and grabbed at her wrist to stop her. "No," I coughed. "That's… that's not necessary."

"Sam, look at yourself!" Nya bemoaned. "You're completely covered in blood. I'll be _damned_ if I-,"

"It's over," I whispered, trying not to raise my voice. "The worst of it… is done. There's no need… to call for help."

Nya forcibly expelled air in a vicious sigh, definitely caused from the stubbornness of her husband. "What would you like me to do, then? What do you want – _need_ – me to do? Please, Sam… I want to _help_ you."

I settled into a more comfortable position with my head still resting in Nya's lap, the soft thick wool of her robe cushioning my skull. I reached up and brought her arms over to rest upon me, bringing me into a loose hug.

"Just hold me," I said. "I just want to be held here for a bit."

Reacting to my request, but still cautious at my pathetic state, Nya obliged as she snaked her arms underneath mine, pulling me upward a little more so that I was resting against her while she in turn was sitting against the wall. My back laid against her while Nya's legs trapped me between them. Surrounded by her warm body, I snuggled in further, barely paying attention to the raw pain of my throat that had been diminishing for the past few minutes.

Nya reached up to grab at a damp washcloth and gently began to wipe my face with it, scouring off all the dried blood that had encrusted around my chin and in my beard. Just the feeling of cool liquid against my skin was enough to send shivers of relief down my spine. I let her continue to clean me for a little bit until I felt that she was overdoing it and lightly pried the cloth away from her so that I could attend to myself.

"I just can't do this anymore," I finally spoke, managing not to elicit any more irritation from my throat.

"Don't say that, Sam," Nya scolded. "We're just going to have to be more careful with-,"

"No, not that," I corrected, my throat feeling better after the medi-gel had run its course. "I'm not lamenting my current existence or anything like that. I just cannot sit here in this apartment anymore and wait one more second for my wounds to heal. I will literally go crazy if I stay in this place one day longer than necessary."

"It's not that simple, honey."

"But it is! It's very simple! I've been cooped up in this place for ten days and I still have not recovered fully. At this rate, it will be weeks before I can even hope of getting back to my normal routine. I want to get out of here. I want my vacation."

I tilted my head back to look upon my wife as I lifted a hand to her smooth cheek. I wished to see her reaction to my next words.

"I want to go to Rannoch. I want you to see Rannoch and I want to leave as soon as possible."

For a moment, it looked like Nya was about to talk me out of such an idea, but whatever resistance had begun to surface was immediately replaced by a newfound warmth. Her hands stroked my face, already indicating to me that I had her affirmation.

Nya beamed, exposing her brilliant white teeth. "You still want to go?" she asked, hardly daring to believe it.

There could not be any less determination in my gaze back to her. "Absolutely."

My wife just smiled and tightened her hug around me after giving me a kiss on the head. The two of us openly content, all my pain now completely gone and the panic completely dissipated, we simply settled in our position on the bathroom floor, enjoying the company of our partner.

Thank god. I was finally getting out of here. We had a trip to plan.

* * *

 **A/N: Okay, that's it for the smut in this story. It's served its narrative purpose and now we must move on, because the setting is about to take on a whole new change. I would say that the next chapter should not take as long to write, but seeing as the past few chapters have been rather lengthy lately, I've pretty much accepted that anything can happen.**

 **We're only a quarter of the way through _Progeny_ at this point (chapter-wise) so there is plenty of time for new twists and turns to suddenly introduce themselves. Or perhaps they've already been introduced? Hmm... speculation.**

 **At the very least, I want to get at least two more chapters out before _Andromeda_ drops on shelves, and that is going to mean radio silence from me until I complete the game. I've got too much on my plate to even consider adapting stories from the new entry, but I definitely am looking forward to some new talent on this site once it does arrive. Inspiration comes from many places.**

 **Any comments or criticisms, please let me know.**


	6. Chapter 6: Idiot's Array

Stars greeted my view from the virtual display, twinkles dancing amongst the infinite abyss, light from the nearby planet washing luminously through space to reflect up off the singular moon and the metal curves of the Citadel. Tiny specks of shiny dots like sand glistened between the station and the planet – individual ships bridging the gap between the two homes, the foreign neighbors.

To an outsider, we would appear to be one of those specks as well. Just a nameless ship among thousands convoying intrepid voyagers that dared to depart the safe confines of ground beneath our feet as well as an atmosphere. Once an impossibility for me in the past now occurred quite frequently that to be spacefaring did not nearly hold any intrigue or wonder for me anymore. Like anything performed many times, the significance of the action is gradually diminished.

I hoped that I would not be completely jaded about space. Everyone at some point of time has once held a fascination with the prospects of leaving the planet and discovering new lifeforms out there among the stars. If I ever forgot the childlike wonder that had enthralled me about the potential of living in a science-fiction fantasy…

I shudder to imagine the disappointment I could possibly have against myself.

That chagrin would have to wait, though. Look at where I was right now! I was on a ship, about to head off to a new world, with my family at my side! How could I possibly be disinterested at a time like this?

Fatigue from a bad night's sleep combined with a headache could result in that conclusion, for starters.

"Sam, you awake?" a soft voice intoned next to me.

The angry throb of my pounding head merely served to emphasize my current state of alertness. I would be hard pressed _not_ to be awake right now, as each wave felt like my skull was slowly being split open by a hammer and a wedge.

Groggily, I gave my head a shake to clear my thoughts (as well as the pain) and also to ward off the hazy aftereffects upon my consciousness from my having spaced out. I could not stop the yawn though, as I lifted a hand to cover my mouth.

"Barely," I muttered to Nya as I rubbed at my temples. "The mother of all migraines is doing its best to incapacitate me. I'm going to regret taking those caffeine pills this morning once they start to dehydrate me further."

"I'm sorry, Sam," Nya whispered as she leaned over to place the back of a gloved hand against my cheek. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Not really. Besides, it was probably my fault. Drank too much tea last night and only got a few hours of sleep in."

The quarian shook her head like I was an idiot. "What kind of doctor are you if you consistently make terrible decisions regarding _your_ health?"

That got me to chuckle a bit. "Do as I say, not as I do," I quoted with a fair amount of mirth. "I've never been the best judge of my limitations."

"Obviously," came the incredulous snort. "The past couple weeks alone have provided plenty of indications to support that claim."

I could not fathom a witty reply – thanks to the toll my headache was having on my psyche – so I gave an awkward shrug and settled in for the lengthy voyage aboard the yacht.

The chair that I was sitting in was plush, quite comfortable. Tan leather with very little wear; it still retained the springiness in the seat since the day I had picked the ship up from the lot. Civilian sector design obviously, but rather uncommon to find in a turian craft such as this as the avian species preferred their seating arrangements a little more utilitarian, a byword for "uncomfortable." Perhaps the interior of the ship had been outsourced to a human company; we as a species had a better sense of comfort and luxury than the militaristic turians, to put it nicely.

The yacht itself was quite impressive, at least to someone like me. If everyone back on Earth in the 21st century had entertained the idea of making it to space at some point in time, then possessing their own spaceship was probably the highest pinnacle of wishful thinking that could be derived by our unimaginative minds. The yacht was one of the first major purchases I had made when coming to this universe, and since I easily could afford it, I figured that I might as well check one item off the bucket list. Let's be honest, if you had the funds and if they were being sold legitimately, how could you _not_ resist the temptation to purchase your very own spaceship?! One stylus signature later and I had become the owner of my very own gateway to the stars.

 _The Monterrey Obtruder_. Came up with the name of it myself. It had been a name that took my no time at all to formulate in my head. After all, I was the obtruder in this case and I had hailed from the Monterrey area in the past. Why _not_ make the name of the ship an in-joke to my existence?

The design of the _Obtruder_ was sleek, with angular wings, and a pointed nose. It really did look like a black bird of prey right out of a science fiction movie – but what really was science fiction to people these days? One measly spaceship was not going to bring anyone the same amount of sheer joy that it brought me. There were hundreds of yachts like this just running around on the Citadel anyway – a good comparison for this ship would be a Mercedes as it was not rare at all but not too common for it to not even draw a second thought.

What the hell, I thought it looked nice – and that was the important part.

The interior design of the _Obtruder_ was just as exotic as the exterior. Being completely conceived from the ground up by turians, it was inevitable that their design aesthetics were going to be completely foreign to humans – or me, at the very least. The cockpit for the yacht was smack-dab in the center of the craft instead of at the bow: two seats with an enormous control panel for every conceivable system on this boat. Every switch was holographic – haptic input – and mostly displayed huge chunks of data as the requisite visual information the pilot needed to make course corrections. Space is a big place, after all, and the probability that a ship would collide with another object out here is so small it might as well be infinite, which is why the need to "eyeball" any physical items drifting in space was pretty much a futile affair. To make matters worse for someone with extreme culture shock like me, with the cockpit being in the center of the yacht and all, there were no physical windows for me to look out of. They may be useless in an era where cameras can replicate virtual environments (which is what I had up on my screen at the moment), but I missed not being able to look out and view any points of reference for myself with my own damn eyes. Holoscreens just don't get the job done as well in comparison. Some of the magic is lost when you are unable to see something as majestic as a planet without having to look at a freaking screen.

Speaking of which…

My eyes were itching again, which was my cue to take a bottle of specialty eye drops from my jacket pocket and to squeeze a tiny bit of the medication out onto my corneas. I blinked several times to disperse the drops, the fiery sensation ebbing away gradually.

Ugh, I hate to admit it, but I was starting to get used to my newly augmented eyes. Either that or I had finally become numb from the pain. My throat still acted up from time to time, but it was becoming much less of a regularity and more of an occasional happening whenever I would have a coughing attack and spit up blood. The medi-gel mixed with the painkillers were doing a bang-up job with keeping me sane and healthy, but none of those could possibly compare with the secret weapon that I had at my disposal.

Nya.

The doctors were right – having support from a loved one made all the difference to me in my state. For all the actual healing medication could do to me, they would not be able to repair the complete drain on my mentality that my injuries had caused. That was where Nya came in. She was the one who, every morning, gave assurances to me that everything would be fine even during the times that I was most in pain. She was the one who would hold my hand whenever I was hacking my throat to pieces. She always knew what to say or what not to say, as she let light touches echo upon me as little reminders of her care.

Having the right person in the right place could make all the difference in someone's life.

She sat next to me in the pilot's chair, her hands confidently at the controls while I, conversely was planted in the copilot's seat. It may be my name upon the ship's registry, but Nya did fly for a living so it made sense that the resident pilot should helm the ship and chart the course. Nya was more passionate about flying than I was, anyway. To her, flying had been her dream for many years and she had been so ecstatic to eventually land a job working as a shuttle pilot for C-Sec, not to mention being able to take the ships that I owned out for a joyride every now and then (something that she considered to be a perk from our marriage). Having her pilot seemed logical.

Looking away for a bit, Nya appraised me studiously. "Other than your head… are you doing all right? No problems with your throat or anything like that?"

"Nothing so far," I said as I rubbed my neck consciously and considered the small knob of flesh from the tracheotomy with my fingers for a bit. "It's… I'm fine. Nothing you and I need to worry about right now."

"And when should I start to worry about you?"

"Oh, either when I start to spew up blood, pass out in my seat, go into seizures, or make weird clicking noises would you need to start to panic a bit."

Nya's eyes narrowed. "I really don't ever want you to occupy my bedside in case I ever get injured. You're the worst at giving assurances, you know that?"

I hid a grin behind a hand. "Ask an obvious question, get a difficult answer. I get a lot of amusement out of it."

"The best comedians are the ones that get others to laugh, not just themselves."

"And what exactly do _you_ know about comedy?" I crossed my arms eagerly.

"More than you, I'd wager," Nya dryly said.

As we spoke, the _Obtruder_ was currently operating under its set course towards the relay at the edge of the solar system. Scything through silent void, it would be a while before the electric blue glow of the mass relay could dimly pulsate upon the visible light frequencies of the yacht's sensors. The combined warming brilliance from Earth and the Citadel very slowly began to die off the further and further we traveled as we left behind the jewel of the Local Cluster, the center of the Milky Way government.

Next stop, the exotic and remote planet of Rannoch. The quarian homeworld.

Nya leaned over and patted my hand gently. "I'm not convinced that you're going to erupt in a spontaneous breakdown of your body processes, but if you ever feel under the weather, let me know if you need anything, okay? If I can help, I want to."

"Sure, honey. For that, you have my word. I'm going to be fine, I know it."

I grabbed her hand with both of mine as the previous vestiges of inappropriate humor that had permeated my last few responses was dropped. She could see that I was completely serious and that no amount of buffoonery made itself known. Nya believed me the instant I voiced my genuine assurance. I knew in my heart, no doubt in my mind, that I would be well with her near me.

Funny, Nya had been the one voicing that exact same claim since day one. Even with that visor on, there was no way that she could hide that smile of pride from me. Quarians were always terrible at masking their body language.

Nya tangled a hand in my hair affectionately as she nudged her helmet on the side of my head in the imitation of a kiss. "That's my Sam," she praised. As she looked at the chronometer that had just started to tick down on the display – our estimated ETA – Nya flicked on the intercom system as she melodiously spoke a little louder. "Just so you know, we're projected to arrive at Rannoch in about eighteen hours. You guys might want to find something to occupy yourselves with until then because we haven't gone to the trouble of hiring any inflight staff to cater to your ridiculous needs."

"Eighteen hours!" a shocked voice emitted from behind the control panel, in the lounging area. A shaved head of dark skin popped up and incredulously looked at the both of us. "You've got to be taking the piss. It cannot be physically possible for it to take eighteen hours to reach Rannoch from Earth!"

"You can blame Einstein for helping to define the modern laws of physics that govern us, Chandler," I quipped. "Rannoch is practically on the other side of the galaxy, about seventy thousand light years away. How long did you think it was going to take to get there, twenty minutes?"

The beauty of the mass relay network was that the energy the relays contained – dark energy created by intense mass effect fields - had the capability to propel ships to other relays placed around the galaxy nearly instantaneously. Someone could literally span thousands of lightyears in mere seconds thanks to the power of the mass relays. Unfortunately, these relays only had one set destination they could transport users to that could not be adjusted. Therefore, travelers had to navigate the full mass relay network, making hops from relay to relay, in order to access a solar system if it was not directly linked between just two relays. Traversing between these relays at FTL speeds was where the length was added to the trip. Even though FTL meant that you were traveling insanely fast, you were probably only averaging around 13 light years per day at that velocity. Thankfully, the relays required to access Rannoch from the Local Cluster were all located within a 5 lightyear period to each other at each "hop," which meant that the computer's (and Nya's) calculations of it taking eighteen hours to reach our destination were completely accurate.

"Bloody hell," Chandler muttered while Rie did not seem fazed in the slightest.

Inviting the two along had been Nya's idea, actually. I had mentioned to her over the past few days that Rie and Chandler had also received their Rannoch visas and had been looking for an excuse to go. That gave Nya the idea to extend an invitation to see the planet with us, as she wanted me to be surrounded by familiar people who were kind and supportive. I needed the positive interaction anyway.

I was not disappointed that I would not be getting to spend this vacation with Nya all to myself, I could get that sort of quality time usually every day, so I appreciated the thought of my wife looking out for me. Rie and Chandler also appreciated the opportunity, from what they had been telling me.

On the other hand, Chandler seemed to be having second thoughts as he began searching high and low for something on the table. "You don't happen to have a vidscreen installed on this tub, do you?"

"Sure, you can connect to the _Obtruder's_ network to bring up the media center controls. I've also got some films on the ship's hard drive too so you don't have to eat up all my bandwidth looking for something to watch." I got up out of my chair to show the two. "Everything all right in the driver's seat?" I asked Nya.

" _Helm_ ," she corrected with a mischievous simper. "It's called the helm, Sam."

"You know what I'm talking about."

"And I am the only one out of the two of us with a military grade pilot's certification, who, might I add, has piloted capital ships in multiple combat scenarios, performed shuttle supply runs in warzones, and currently pursues criminals for a living, and also…"

"I regret provoking you already," I muttered as I left my chair, leaving Nya trailing off with her point sufficiently proven. I came around to the table and dinked around on my omni-tool for the control to the screen, which quickly flared to life upon the leftmost wall – displaying a wealth of selections aimed to sufficiently kill a lot of time: movies, music, and video games (traditional and VR).

Rie immediately hijacked the controls; she wanted to view one of the latest in a long line of hard sci-fi films featuring an armored commando against an alien scourge waging a religious holy war upon the protagonist and his species – based on an individual property that was more than a little familiar to me. Chandler, having seen the film already, began protesting in favor of playing one of the hundred video games that the center had at its disposal. Both looked to me to be the tiebreaker but this was amusing to the point that I decided to let them argue it out amongst themselves. I had no preference as to how to waste my travel time and frankly watching them disagree was rather entertaining to behold.

While Rie and Chandler's altercation continued to escalate, I quickly ducked into the tiny kitchen (barely two square meters of space) to fix up something for me to eat. I was still not allowed to have coffee as an insufficient amount of time had passed for my wounds to heal to the point where I could safely consume it, which is what the caffeine pills that I had taken earlier were for; they provided the wake-up jolt I needed without having to risk my health. They did tend to make me a little jumpy, though.

In the few days since Nya and I had definitively decided on journeying to Rannoch, we had taken care to stock the _Obtruder's_ stores full of the requisite supplies: food, water, media, toilet paper, the usual. As a result, the fridge more than adequately stocked of the soft food in tubed form (levo for me, dextro for Nya) that I was able to eat instead of the gristle that would have required a bit of chewing. Good thing we planned ahead, there would be nothing on this ship for me to eat except steak and eggs.

Making sure that I selected a tube with the right chirality (so that I could avoid a repeat of what had happened a few nights ago) I put it in the microwave and heated it up so that it was lukewarm and not scalding hot nor chilling cold. I did not bother with a straw and simply took sips of the thick substance. It took a few moments before I realized exactly what I was eating. Lumpy, slightly runny, with a salty taste.

Felt like grits. It tasted like grits.

I looked at the tube's label for clarification. It was grits.

There certainly could be worse things to eat, all things considered. Actually, I did not mind grits, seeing as this was the buttered flavor if I was reading the packaging correctly. It may be a little grainy texture-wise, but it was perfectly palatable. Must have been the first thing that I had eaten in weeks that I found to be particularly tasty.

In the middle of a swallow though, there was a halting sensation upon my throat and I made a face as I began to cough hard. Damned bit of food went down the wrong pipe. A few hacks cleared my airway and soon I was breathing normally, but it was when I removed the back of my hand from my mouth did I spot the tiny flecks of blood upon it, a faint red mist on my skin.

Shakily, not knowing how bad the damage was, I took a few hasty glances in all directions before I sidled into the tiny lavatory near one of the two bunks. It was pretty much the same size as an airplane bathroom, if you did not count the shower squeezed into the back. Like an airplane bathroom, the lavatory itself was designed to squash as many facilities into as small of a space as possible, leaving little room for any occupants to maneuver. I had just turned on the faucet to wash the blood from my hands before I heard an expectant tapping of boots on the floor and a soft harrumph coming from the living area.

Guess you weren't as stealthy as you thought, huh, Sam?

Before I could cover up the evidence, in a flash Nya wedged herself into what little space there remained in the lavatory while the door closed behind her. She grabbed at my hand and inspected the blood upon it, uttering a tired sigh as she realized what was going on.

"A little cramped in here, don't you think?" I said, trying to diffuse the tension.

Nya, as it turned out, was not in the mood. "I was starting to think that you were getting better," she sighed.

"Nya, I just had some technical difficulties swallowing my food. This didn't just occur out of the blue, you know."

"But why try to hide it by rushing into the bathroom, hoping that I wouldn't see? I thought you just agreed that if you were feeling bad, you would tell me."

Frustrated, I clenched my eyes shut in regret as my hands balled into fists. The drying flecks of blood became stretched over the etches in my skin, spreading the red film upon me.

"I… I know," I said to her. "I did promise that, but I didn't think that you wanted updates if I ever _bruise_ myself or anything trivial like that. I agreed to open up to you more if I was ever in serious pain, not for a few specks of blood because I don't want you to be worried about me all the time."

"Worried?" Nya elicited incredulously. "You're barely being held together as it is, still recovering from a serious injury, and you're telling me that I _shouldn't_ be worried? How could I not be?"

As she spoke, I opened the medicine counter and began taking out my painkiller pills along with my medi-gel inhaler and set them down on the lip of the sink. Not so easy given that with the two of us being stuffed into a box barely larger than a golf cart, it was a bit of a challenge to maneuver about.

"Look Nya," I uttered through clenched teeth while I finally rinsed my hands clean of the blood. "I understand that you're concerned about my health, but the last thing that the both of us need is you freaking out every time I cough the wrong way."

I could see my wife tilt her head in the mirror, stunned. "Freaking out? I'm not freaking out!"

"Yes, you are," I said gently after I leaned my head back so that I could gulp down my medication quickly. "You don't need to be hovering over me, worried that I might bleed out all the time. This sort of thing, the coughing blood, I'm expecting this to continue for a while. What that doesn't mean is that you should go into conniptions or shove yourself in a room less than the size of a Hungarian prison with me just to make sure I'm all right from the equivalent of a paper cut."

I took a deep breath from the inhaler, already getting used to the slight stinging sensation. Squeezing my eyes shut, it was still abundantly clear to me that Nya was still agitated based on how her body was trembling as she pressed up against me.

"Sam…" Nya began as she shakily placed a hand on my shoulder, trying ever so hard to breach the wall that had been building between us.

With a bang, I slammed the medicine cabinet door a bit harder than I was intending, which gave Nya a nasty jolt. "I'm _fine_ , Nya!" I snapped at her, a bit of a crackle emitting from my throat.

Instantly, I regretted my lack of self-control. Nya yanked her hand away like she had been burned and she backed up against the door fearfully. Her eyes were wide behind her visor, shocked and dismayed. Mouthing a silent curse, all aggression fled my body as I hung my head shamefully. As my posture slumped, the grimace on my face fell away as well.

 _You idiot. She just wants to help you. You don't need to push her away like this because she cares._

My subconscious spoke the truth. God, I hated talking to Nya like this, especially because she did not deserve this attitude from me. Maybe I was just sick and tired of being coddled and restricted from my injuries for the past couple weeks that I wanted things to rapidly return to normal. But I could never go back to normal, not completely. Normal was just a concept of an uninteresting life that was constantly being redefined in my case.

I just had to find a way to adapt, to be considerate and to learn. I needed to find understanding.

Slowly, thoughtfully now, I took Nya's hand in my own as I kept my eyes downward as a sign of my guilt. "It's a quarian thing, isn't it?" I asked her.

"A… a what?"

"You know, your constant desire to consider the welfare of those you care about. _That_ quarian thing. It's something that's been bred into you while you were on the flotilla, I bet. You once told me that with such a small population, everyone had to look out for one another in their community. Like they were one giant family."

Timidly, Nya nodded, her eyes open and earnest. "We… we had to consider everyone of utmost importance to the fleet. Our superiors constantly reminded us that not looking out for each other could possibly signify death for us all."

"So it's almost a reflex reaction for you, and for that, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I barked at you when you were just trying to help. You weren't doing anything wrong… it's just that… I can't explain it but…"

"Humans value their independence," Nya considered out loud while she looked down briefly in thought. "You've never had to live in such dire environments as quarians before, so it makes sense that you're a little more inward thinking than us. I think that I should be sorry for not understanding that you wanted your space."

I chuckled as I placed my hands upon Nya's shoulders. "I guess we both still have some things we need to learn about each other, huh?"

"Guess so," Nya agreed, gratefully sharing the laugh. "But what you said before, how everyone in the flotilla was a giant family? That doesn't apply to me anymore. _You're_ my family, Sam. _You're_ the only person who matters to me now. I don't have anyone else to look out for, you know."

As I involuntarily glanced in the mirror, I managed to spy my reflection and the softened face that gazed back at me held no more anger, no more pain. I no longer looked like the belligerent idiot that I had visualized in my head, but now somehow managed to appear kindly and emotionally receptive. Struck at how much importance I ranked in Nya's heart, I pulled her in for a gentle bear hug for our frames to melt together.

"Nya," I whispered at her helmet to where her ear would be, "I want you to know that I do appreciate you looking after me, and that I cannot tell you how much I value you in my life, but I can certainly handle a few errant blood drops every so often. If I can handle them without worry, you can too. There's nothing to worry about now, I'm quite all right. Trust me."

"Okay," the quarian said. "I… I understand your reasoning now."

I lightly tipped her head upward with a finger. "Hey, the way you've been acting it's like _I'm_ the one that's been sealed away in an enviro-suit."

"Hmm, that would have been a shame," Nya breathed as one hand came to my hip. "Because I wouldn't get to see your handsome face all the time."

My fingers mimicked her movements. The close proximity of our bodies meant that we could discern each and every twitch our bodies betrayed. I could even feel Nya's temperature rising from underneath her suit.

"Not that I'm complaining, but the longer we stay here, the more suspicious the two outside are going to be of our absence," I grimaced as the counter started to poke into my back, ending what had been the beginning of a sensuous moment. "Besides, this isn't exactly the most comfortable of locations to linger."

"Oh… okay," Nya nodded breathily before she hit the button to open the door, the two of disengaging from our embrace.

Rather awkwardly, the two of us stumbled back out into the main area, smoothing at ourselves to make sure our outfits were not suspiciously askew. We needn't have worried; Rie and Chandler were still bickering over the remote to the point where the two of them had begun engaging in a bout of playful wrestling for control. They hadn't noticed us slip back in, so while Rie was focused on pinning her boyfriend against the couch, I surreptitiously bounded into my room to organize the remaining medication left in my luggage, spurred on to be a little more proactive from the encounter with Nya.

As soon as I crossed the threshold into the cramped quarters, I felt my right foot fail to touch ground and I blinked as the momentum of my movement sent me tumbling around the tiny room, the scenery churning by as I went head over head. The brief moment of queasiness harmlessly passed and I finally realized that the gravity had been shut off in this room, something that should have been obvious from the get-go based on the fact that I was not on the actual ground, but I had been so scatterbrained that cognitive thought was taking longer to process than normal.

"Oh, for god's sake, _Nya!_ " I hollered, trying to crane my head around where some heavy giggling was taking place.

"Having a little trouble there, Sam?" she snickered as she stood in the doorway with her omni-tool open to the yacht's life support systems.

"Not really in the mood for this!" I grumbled while I was lazily rotating over the bed, a headache beginning to encroach from all the shifts in perspective. Beyond my initial annoyance, I began to smile irresistibly. "Let me down? Please?"

"In a moment. It's fun watching you like this."

Luckily, since I had been the only object in the bedroom with any actual momentum, I was the only thing suspended in the room right now. All the other loose objects remained where they were – centrifugal force kept them located where they sat and it would only be if an outside kinetic force were to meet with these objects would they be subject to the lack of gravitational forces.

Beyond Nya, I could hear panicked yelps and shouts coming from the living area. That would be, by power of deduction, Rie and Chandler. Based on the sounds they were making it seemed like they had also been caught a bit off guard by the recent gravitational development, and not in a good way.

"What the hell?!" I heard Chandler yell out.

" _Waagh!_ " Rie screamed.

Nya's eyes were wide as she swiveled her head around. "Oh dammit," she muttered as she examined her omni-tool. "I was just trying to turn off _our_ room, not theirs. Stupid user interface. Hold on."

An invisible hand suddenly yanked me down to the ground at an unsettling speed without warning. I safely dropped onto the bed on my back, which caused the mattress to bounce slightly. I was allowed one second to breathe before I heard muffled thumps, shouts of pain, and the smashing of glass from the other room. Guess there might have been some unsecured items floating about back in the hold where our guests had been residing.

I rolled over onto my stomach and brought myself up on the bed as I cocked my eyebrow at Nya, amused at the sheer horror that had gripped her body.

"Your fault, not mine, honey," I shrugged. " _You_ get to tidy that mess up."

* * *

With around eleven hours left to go on our voyage, the four of us had settled into whatever activities we were hoping would take our minds off the monotony of enduring the transit. Chandler was parked in front of the vidscreen, using his omni-tool as a controller for some kind of racing video game that I had never seen before in my life. It looked like a variation of a kart racer, but with bleeding-edge graphics and a rather savage online community. Based on the chat log on the side of the screen, many of Chandler's competitors were routinely boasting about successfully having sexual intercourse with his and apparently everyone else's mothers.

Even after couple centuries teenagers still are not capable of maturing over an online connection.

Rie was quietly immersed in a novel while she laid down at the dining booth, very attuned at focusing on the story instead of the loud noises emitted from her boyfriend's digital escapades. She was always excellent at tuning out distractions – it made her a better surgeon as she had the ability to concentrate fully on her work instead of the many disturbances that had the potential to crop up every now and then.

Nya remained at the helm after she had swept up all of the broken glass from the falling mugs, now focused on monitoring all the _Obtruder's_ systems as a way to clear her mind. Observing engine temperatures, heat emissions, FTL drive operations, and potential drift was simply the perfect way for her to kill time through number crunching. And what better numbers game to play than the granddaddy of them all? Rocket science.

I had managed taken a nap for all of thirty minutes. I could never sleep right while in a moving vehicle – didn't matter if it was a train, a bus, plane, or even a spaceship, I could not get a good rest knowing that my body was in motion. To be honest, those caffeine pills I had taken might have had something to do with being unable to nap. Disappointed from my failing to achieve a successful rest, I walked into the area where everyone was hanging out while blearily rubbing at my eyes (partly to satisfy the itch and partly to relieve the tiredness surrounding my eyelids). Ducking down to access the set of captain's drawers underneath the dining booth, I withdrew a slender metal case before I placed it onto the table with a hefty bang. Rie glanced up at her book, now torn away from her thoughts by my sudden proximity.

"Anyone up for a game of poker?" I asked.

Before I knew it, the booth was completely filled as everyone had dropped what they were doing and packed themselves in for a friendly game. Seems that everyone had been bored out of their minds until I had made my suggestion to play.

"Which kind of poker are we playing?" Chandler asked as he began to sort the chips on the table by color and divided them in fours. "Skyllian-Five? Seven Card Stud? Omaha High? Five Card Draw?"

My fingers dexterously shuffled the deck, quickly maneuvering the cards into place as they slipped from my thumbs into my palms in a controlled fashion. "I was kind of figuring Texas Hold'em. Five card hands aren't as much fun, in my opinion. We're all clear on the rules of hold'em, right?"

Nya and Chandler nodded while Rie fidgeted. "It's been a while since I've played cards at all," she admitted sheepishly. "Mostly I just go for the roulettes. What is it… a straight beats a three of a kind, a flush beats a straight, and a full house beats a flush and so on?"

"Pretty much," I said as I now began flicking two cards to each member on the table in a clockwise fashion. "If you forget the hand rankings, we'll remind you. No one's going to cheat you out of a hand… right, Nya?"

"One time," Nya raised a finger as she tried to defend her actions around a smile. "I only tried that one time."

"You _tried_ to justify using a joker as a wild card to get yourself a flush!"

"Well, nobody's perfect."

The requisite players distributed their blinds upon the table and we each examined our hands before starting our bets. I surreptitiously flipped my cards up, using my other hand to block prying eyes. Seven of hearts and an eight of clubs. Not a terrible hand, but it set me up for a straight should I be so lucky.

I was next in line after the big blind, so I had to throw in two chips if I wanted to see the round through. It was a pittance and I wanted to see how eager my opponents were so staying in seemed rather obvious. Rie and Chandler called and Nya elected to "check" or move on without placing a higher bet, since she was the big blind.

Chandler burned a card before laying down the flop. The three cards that were distributed did not exactly entitle me to a win: queen of spades, nine of hearts, and a six of clubs. No chance of me getting a flush and nothing to pair with either, but there was still the potential for the straight. None of us bet this go-around, leaving Chandler to introduce the turn, the fourth card.

"High rollers over here," I drolly commented.

Chandler shrugged. "It's early in the game, we're not going to bet everything at once."

"I might have to if I want to liven things up a little."

The fourth card was a five of diamonds. I had the straight. My opponents' expressions seemed to be teetering on utter despair or in Nya's case, completely unreadable.

Rie kept on glancing at her cards, as if they would magically change into a hand that was more suited for what was displayed. " _Damn it_ ," I heard her mutter. Despite her turian advantage at having less expressive features than a human, Rie sure had a terrible poker face. If this was a competitive game, she would be a goner for sure.

Chandler threw in a five chip. "High enough for you, Sam?" he winked.

I began toying with a few of the chips in my closest stack, slowly letting them slip through my fingers to clatter in a neat tower. "We're only getting started. You don't even know what Nya's going to do."

"You're right about that," Nya said with confidence, "because the pot is not high enough for _me_. Raise."

A blue chip clattered into the pile. A twenty. What did Nya have that would cause her to bet this way?

"Call," I responded as I introduced my own blue chip.

Rie sighed and pushed her cards over to the dealer. "Fold," she shook her head.

"Not interested in staying through the hand?" Nya teased.

"Not with crap cards like that," Rie grumbled.

Chandler called the bet immediately and then slid the river over to join the other four cards. I took in a breath silently in relief.

An eight of hearts. It was a pair for me but it was pretty much chump change at this point. I already had the straight and since things did not look good for a flush or a full house, I was confident that my hand would come out on top.

Nya checked and I almost copied her move out of reflex. Checking on the river? Either she was downplaying her hand or she did not want to get caught up in a potential bluff. Suspicious, I eyed her the entire time I lifted another blue chip and set it into the pot.

"Twenty," I announced, my eyes daring the entire table to mock my decision.

Chandler just shrugged and tossed in his chip – a call. Nya's fingers tapped on the table in thought while she glanced upward momentarily as a sign of indecision. With a final gaze of acceptance, she plucked a chip from her stack and distributed it as the latest addition to the pot.

"I'll call that," she said.

"Show us what you have, then," Chandler beckoned.

Nya flipped her cards over and I nearly laughed in disbelief. She just had an ace and king of clubs! A good hand to start with no doubt, but completely worthless in this regard considering what she had to work with on the table.

"Come on, Nya," I smiled and gestured to her pathetic hand. "What were you thinking, betting with that? You had nothing the entire time!"

Nya slumped in her seat in embarrassment. "I was kind of hoping that I'd get a pair in the end," she mumbled meekly.

"If it helps," Chandler chimed in, "you should have bet more aggressively given that you were bluffing like that. It would have deterred us from making any bets and possibly caused us to fold. Not me though, because I know that I have the best hand for this round!"

"Do tell, Chandler," I merely said as I laid my hand out, showcasing the straight. Rie gave a murmur of approval and Nya leaned forward in interest. "I believe you were mentioning that you had the best hand out of all of us here?"

Chandler bit his lip, momentarily flummoxed as he examined the contents of the table. His hands clenched reflexively, but quickly softened as a grin began to spread across his face, to my worry. I then began to have the notion that I had made something of a miscalculation.

"Why, yes," he said. "Did I stutter?"

And with that, he flipped his cards.

Ten of diamonds and a jack of spades.

A higher straight.

"Son of a bitch!" I groaned as I watched the smug bastard slide the pile of chips to his side of the table.

"Haha!" Chandler gloated. "Can't fault me for speaking the truth! Oh, this is a good omen for me!"

"You only got your straight on the last card," I pointed out. "Before that, you had the equivalent of Nya's hand – plain junk - but you just managed to get extremely lucky."

The man wiggled his eyebrows. "I know, but if this round is any indication, my luck is going to hold for the rest of the game!"

* * *

"My luck sucks," Chandler bemoaned as he held his head in his hands.

Forty-five minutes of playing painted an entirely different picture than what Chandler had been expecting, as it turned out. In contrast to the rest of our rather conservative approaches, Chandler had been placing bets the entire game like he was embarking on guerrilla warfare – quick and dirty strikes on high value targets. Unfortunately, performing those strikes in real life might have held better odds as Chandler's pile of chips had quickly dwindled away as the three of us took him to the cleaners each time. Didn't matter if he had genuinely good hands or if he was bluffing; for some weird reason he always bet high amount for each round. That made him predictable and easy to anticipate. He had finally bowed out ten minutes ago after Rie had gotten a superb four-of-a-kind against his paltry two-pair.

"I still can't believe you did this to me," Chandler accused his girlfriend in mock shame. "I was hemorrhaging chips, you saw that I was on the ropes, and you were practically enjoying yourself as you stomped on my neck."

Rie looked incredulous. "Don't blame me for making such shitty bets, dear. What kind of a person bets a hundred and fifty when he only has a pocket pair of threes and nothing else on the table?!"

"I was trying to bluff you all out!" Chandler groaned as he covered his face in regret. "I didn't actually think you'd call me!"

"I think that you're worse at this then I am. You were the one saying that we should bet more aggressively if we're bluffing, but no one bets a hundred and fifty on the flop even if they have two aces in their hand! You pretty much just revealed to everyone here that you were bluffing with that dumb move!"

Chandler jerked in shock. "Rubbish!" he exclaimed. "Surely not everyone here saw my ulterior motive! Sam, Nya, did you know that I was bluffing that round?"

"Yep," Nya said tonelessly.

"Uh-huh," I nodded.

Chandler gave us a raspberry. "Had I known that I was playing with all-stars…"

Since he was knocked out and all, Chandler had now been assigned as the permanent dealer for the game just to keep him occupied. He glumly cut and shuffled the deck, but it was hard for any of us to feel sorry for him as his haphazard and lackadaisical tactics had resulted in nothing more than his elimination to nobody's surprise but his.

While he was doing that, I took deep breaths as I flexed the fingers on my left hand. There was a bit of numbness that was afflicting it at the moment, nothing too serious, but annoying in the same vein as a tickle in the back of your throat would be. Minor remnants of phantom pain from its temporary detachment from my body was the cause – a few nerve endings occasionally sent backfired signals to my brain, eliciting these numb sensations every once in a while. Stretching my fingers usually did the trick of warding these feelings off, but it was yet another reminder of just how stitched together and mangled my body had become.

My other hand held my late father's pipe, a trinket that I had taken along with me for the hell of it. There were no smokeable substances filling the bowl yet I was content with simply chewing on the end of the pipe more out of reflex than anything. It gave me comfort, in an odd way, to hold onto the pipe in this manner yet not use it in the way it was designed. I personally felt that it gave me something extra to concentrate on when I had the pipe end clenched between my teeth. I probably looked like a dork with an unlit pipe in my mouth, but I felt more pensive with it in my possession. Damn what anyone else thought.

Two cards were propelled at me from Chandler's end and I expertly caught and peered at them before setting them face down. Two and nine of clubs. Not great odds for a straight but not a bad start at obtaining a flush. The blinds were called and no one raised, which prompted Chandler to set down the flop.

"Damn…" Rie muttered again.

Two aces were on the table, one of clubs and one of diamonds. The third card was a nine of spades. So, everyone could at least claim the pair of aces if they were playing with a crap hand to begin with. For me, I liked the odds that I had on the table. Already I had a two pair and was two cards away from obtaining a flush. There was even the opportunity to obtain a full house as well.

I scanned the table to gauge everyone's faces. If turians could sweat, I'd imagine Rie would currently be up to that. She looked absolutely unnerved at the potential hands laid out in front of her, so I could take that to mean that she had an absolute killer hand or she had zilch to work with.

I passed over Chandler's bored expression as I appraised Nya. She was holding her cards up to her face, guarding them preciously. She really did seem on edge about something, perhaps the length of the game was getting to her, or perhaps she was worried about a hand she might bluff.

Or perhaps… it was what was reflected in her visor that excited her so. At the angle that she was holding her cards, it was impossible for me not to notice the warped glimpses of the singular symbols displayed upon the crimson glass.

Nya had a pocket pair of aces.

My heart sank. Nya's four of a kind trumped whatever hand I could possibly hope to muster. Now I had a dilemma on my hands. Do I fold in the wake of this new knowledge, knowing that by doing so I would almost be practically cheating? Poker rules stated that it was up to the player to guard their cards at all times and that any wayward glances would be considered the holder's fault, but this was entirely unfair in this case. Nya had been doing everything right and it was only dumb luck that I was able to see her cards. I knew that I would lose if she played that hand against me, there was no other way of putting it. But… should I continue to play and see if Nya would end up using her hand at all?

While I was in the midst of deciding, Nya rapped on the table. A check. Now it was my turn to make a move. There was no timer in poker, I could have all the time I needed to make a decision. I thumbed at the cards as I stared at the flop, knowing what the overall outcome would amount to. Sensing agitation from my delay, I gathered my breath as I looked up and adopted a poise of courage.

The hell with it.

"I'm all in," I announced clearly.

Rie jolted and looked back at her cards and then at her chips. Her pile was smaller than mine so a win against her would knock her out cleanly. I expected her to take a long while to decide but she muttered a strangled curse as she scratched at a mandible in agitation.

"Spirits… I guess there's nothing for it. I'm all in as well."

Chandler rubbed his hands in anticipation. "All right people, now we have a pot. What about you, Nya? You going to call or fold?"

Slowly, Nya crossed her hands as she sat up straighter, managing to appear very elegant as she collected her breath. She had the belief that she would win and it radiated off of her quite obviously. Yet there was still an aura of doubt within her, unsure if any of us had a secret weapon – a trump card – up our sleeve that would summarily wreck her hopes and dreams. That was the beauty of poker, even if you had a killer hand it was hard to determine if your opponents had a better one.

As they say, the worst hand is the second best hand.

"I will also go all in," Nya proclaimed, now fully committed.

"That's it, then," Chandler beckoned to us. "Everyone, please show your cards."

I revealed my two and nine of clubs, not provoking many gasps of admiration or horror. Rie also had a nine in her possession as well as a four, so automatically she had the higher hand. If it had been just us, Rie probably would have won this round and have been able to stay alive a little longer.

But then Nya revealed what she had been holding.

Collective groans erupted from both Rie and Chandler at the sight of the four-of-a-kind, but I hid a smile behind my hand.

Chandler meanwhile, looked positively shocked. "O…Okay… since everyone's cards are on the table, I'm just going to give you guys the turn and the river all at once. Not that it's going to matter at this point. Damn, what a hand."

Like he said, the next two cards did nothing to advance mine or Rie's position. There was not going to be any squabbling over how much of which pot was going to which person. It could not be any more clear cut.

Nya had won the game.

While Nya stretched her arms and leaned back proudly in victory (well-earned, in my opinion), Rie shot her boyfriend a look of playful disgust.

"All you had to do was not bet like a maniac, you imbecile!"

* * *

I yawned as I started the process of changing into my sleep clothes – everyone had been up for nearly a full day and there were still six hours left in the voyage to go. Of course we were not going to play poker for the rest of the time, so it was mutually agreed that we take advantage of the remaining hours and use them to rest a bit. Maybe this time I could get in more than half an hour of shuteye. This yacht had the accommodations for us and the other couple to sleep in separate rooms, plus the beds on this boat were not that half bad either. Not as comfortable as the one in our apartment but leagues ahead of a hardened military-grade bunk.

Next to me, Nya was busy unlatching her hood from her suit, gently folding it and laying it on the sparse nightstand on her side of the bed. That being finished, she slipped off her boots, revealing her suited feet. Her toes wiggled now that she no longer had her movement restricted, grateful for the momentary relief. The two of us slipped into bed and the light automatically dimmed as the motion sensors detected stillness in the area.

As I shimmed the covers up to my chest, I felt a soft suit-clad hand graze my face.

"Still checking up on me?" I asked, this time with a slight grin as I now understood the need for Nya to impart her attention onto my health. By accepting that doing so brought her peace, I could summarily find comfort from her actions. "I don't think that I've come down with a fever since the last time you asked."

My wife shrugged as her hand now moved across my chest. "One can never be too sure. I just want to make sure that you're at one hundred percent."

"Heh, I'll never be at one hundred percent, dear. But I'm pretty damn close now which is what matters."

"Just so long as you're not hurting. You're not, are you?"

I murmured in the negative. "Medicine's working for now. Nothing is particularly agonizing of note."

"That's good. I would hate for you to be in pain for this entire trip, seeing as you're the main reason as to why we're here now."

I turned on my side to face her. "Really? I was under the mentality that this whole trip was for you. After all, it's _your_ planet we're visiting."

Nya had nothing else to say to me, although I knew that she would have liked to reiterate her point and bring all the importance onto me, but maybe she sensed that I was not going to let this one go. I was recovering, yes, but visiting Rannoch was several times more important for Nya, based on everything her people had gone through in the past to reclaim it.

Our hands did the rest of the talking as we lay there, coming together to briefly play with the other's fingers. Before we nodded off, I kissed the top of Nya's helmet, already anticipating what tomorrow would bring. I've been through too much in my thirty years for any sane person to endure – it was about time that I embrace this vacation to the full. Life is precious and spending it with the people I care about is probably one of the most important and valuable opportunities one could seize.

My eyes drooped and a small smile came to my face. My final thought before sleep took me was wondering when Nya was ever going to voice that question that she had been holding back for the past couple weeks.

It worried me that I had not yet decided on an answer.

* * *

 **A/N: Pretty much the remainder of the story will take place on Rannoch from here on out. This is where the more interesting parts of the story will begin to reveal themselves. Don't worry, I know that the pace of this story has been murderously slow so far but it is going to pick up soon. Pacing's always been an aspect that I've struggled with in the past so I've been making a conscious effort to slow things down a bit for the sake of defining characters further. Hopefully the effect is working as intended.**

 **Personally, I'd keep an eye out for the next chapter if I were you.**


	7. Chapter 7: Dual Sources

Earth – One Year Ago

 _The very best moments of our lives are not hard to create. It takes zero energy to transcribe actions into thoughts and to store those thoughts away in your cranial maze. All it takes is the right combination of ingredients: participants and the setting._

 _What it takes to define a person is not artificial, but a process as natural as breathing. The bonds we craft, the ideas we share – these are all creations borne out of people._

 _Take right now, for instance, as one of those earth-shattering, life-defining, simply beautiful moments._

 _It was a beautiful California autumn day, which is to say that it was seventy degrees and sunny with no predicted precipitation forecasted for quite some time. The waters of the Pacific glistened with sunlight, displaying its wide splendor as surfers and swimmers frolicked in the sea. The barking of seals and sea lions could easily be heard above the waves as the aquatic canines frequently bellowed for dominance, mating, or some reason unbeknownst to me. The constant caterwauling had been annoying at first but after a few minutes I had managed to ignore it for the most part – now the noise itself just added to the scenery._

 _I adjusted myself down as I lay upon the thick wool blanket that had been set down over the grass and murmured contently. The occasional ray of sun beat down directly on my face, warming me from the occasional chill the waves from the sea sent my way. Good thing I had thought to apply sunscreen beforehand. The combined scent of the ocean, pine and eucalyptus trees all mingled together into a sweetish-salty mix that reminded me greatly of home. It was pungent, yet pleasant, and it produced a rather lethargic effect in me as the inclination to fall asleep right then and there constantly hovered over me like a persistent gnat._

 _The person lying next to me appeared to have similar thoughts._

 _An elbow gently nudged me in the ribs and I opened my eyes as I turned my head. The action had not appeared to be intentional because Nya was resting on her back inches away from me, like I was, no light emanating from her eyes beyond her visor – they were closed. She mimicked the murmur I had made a few seconds ago, also denoting how comfortable she was._

 _Why wouldn't the two of us be comfortable now, especially since we were pretty much enjoying a siesta in the closest thing to paradise that we could imagine?_

 _For decades the town of Santa Cruz had been primarily known as a place where hippies and surfers went to smoke their illicit vegetation-based substances and to climb aboard paddleboards in the midst of a lackluster site for waves – a particular favorite among the independent and liberal crowd. That progressive culture had summarily diminished once said substances were eventually made federally legal, but Santa Cruz itself still retained its rather unique and artistic side that continued to attract scores of young people to its borders. As a result, the people in this locale were charming, the food excellent, and the town served to become a site for a varied music scene that had managed to entrench itself fully into the town's culture for years on end. A place for the outcast to feel valued._

 _Even now in this day and age, Santa Cruz still refused to adhere to any sort of corporate influence. The city was pretty much untouched from urbanization, even after a hundred and fifty years' difference. It just goes to show how much the people here valued their independence and radically simpler lifestyle. Whereas nearby Monterrey and San Jose had become so aggressively modernized to the point where they were nearly unrecognizable, Santa Cruz's identity still remained so strongly that even the aliens that visited always seemed to be smitten with the area due to the friendliness of its inhabitants as well as the captivating location upon which the town was based._

 _And what a location it was. Thanks to the resistance from the locals against the erection of any high-rises or glass-encased skyscrapers in the area, the resulting landscape was pretty much untarnished. The city itself stood at the water's edge of the Pacific, nestled against a bay that received rather poor surf, but there was still a wide open plain of golden sand near the downtown area for tourists to engage in their activities. In the mountains to the rear, forests brimming with gigantic sequoias filled the air with their springy scent, faint wisps of clouds barely skimmed the peaks as the towering trees shredded the low-hanging fog to ribbons._

 _The two of us, Nya and I, could view the entirety of the natural splendor from where we were laying. Many of the state parks that bordered the city had been preserved in an effort to retain hikers of all skillsets – yet another allure for the tourist crowd. The park at Wilder Ranch offered quite the excursion for even those casual pedestrians most jaded to the sights of nature in all its glory. The hill that we had picked to perch ourselves upon offered an unobstructed view of the Pacific and the beach below, while behind we could see the gradual slope of the Santa Cruz mountains rising towards the sky, all while a eucalyptus tree provided an ample cover of shade, only allowing scant few sunbeams to pierce the leafy layer._

 _The entire day had served as a nice getaway for the two of us. I had wanted to show Nya a little more of Earth so I figured that by taking her to a place that was inherently familiar to me, I would at least retain some advantage in acting as a guide for her, despite being a hundred and fifty years out of date with the area. We had walked along the beach, eaten at this one hip restaurant (she had a cocktail while I sipped absinthe) and finally had wound up on this hillside after a hike to burn off the calories. Basically we were a walking cliché because we adhered strictly to all the cutesy things that couples do when they're in love._

 _Yet there was an even bigger reason why I had brought her to this place, but I had to steer a conversation in the requisite direction before I could reveal my ulterior motive. Just to make things a bit more interesting, of course._

 _Eyes still closed, I smiled warmly before I heard a rustling of clothing and then a pressure upon my chest. I cracked an eyelid open and saw that Nya had partially rolled herself onto my side and the chin of her helmet rested gently upon my chest so that she could look at me. Her hands began creeping up the side up my body and I in turn began to rub her back. I could feel the multiple belts and clasps that adorned her suit, but I could also feel the body beneath all the coverings and I imagined my touch upon her skin, mentally imparting my physical affection onto her. Not a difficult endeavor, as I found that I could easily imagine the orientation of her facial features after all the time we've spent together._

 _Still smiling, I brought a hand to her helmet in a gentle caress. "You look adorable, you know that?"_

" _Hmm," Nya sighed contently as she continued to run a hand over my chest. "I think you're still under the influence of your drink. But I do know that. You're also quite handsome, in case you haven't figured it out yet."_

" _I will admit that I am a little drunk, but it's not on alcohol," I said nearly without thinking. I could afford to be cheesy in private moments such as this. "I love you, Nya."_

" _I love you too, Sam."_

" _I'm guessing that today was a success, huh?"_

 _Nya gave a giggle and held up her hands. "Huge success. This place – Earth - is beautiful! You really used to live here?"_

" _Well, not exactly," I corrected. "I grew up in a town called Carmel about half an hour south of here in a subdivision. There wasn't much of a view from my house, believe it or not. Nothing at all like this…" I swept an arm out which caused Nya to look back out towards the ocean as the green hills and blue sea blazed with such a colorful intensity that it was nearly blinding. Straight out of a postcard. "If I were to ever buy a house on Earth, this would be the view that I would want. Ocean view, hillside estate… yeah, I could easily retire here."_

" _I can certainly see why. Even after all the planets I've visited: Illium, Palaven, Rannoch… Earth has been my favorite so far. Why would you humans ever want to leave such a beautiful home when you have everything right here?"_

" _I'll tell you why," I said as I adjusted myself upon the blanket. Not so easy with a quarian laying on top of me. "Before the other races came along, us humans were doing a bang-up job of spoiling this planet for everyone else. Open warfare, global warming, you have no idea how catastrophically close we once were to rendering this planet uninhabitable. Having lived there for years under the constant shadow of total ruination, you would get tired of living around such a toxic environment of pessimism. If you had come around a hundred and fifty years earlier, you would definitely have been disappointed in us. We kept on making so many mistakes back then that it's a wonder we were able to pull back from the brink. We were idiots then."_

" _Not all of them," Nya whispered as she stroked my cheek lovingly. "You certainly are a better man than you're letting on."_

" _Maybe that's just my 21_ _st_ _century prejudices clouding my opinions. Back then we had scores of people refusing to bow to intelligent propositions and scientific proof, choosing instead to let outdated and inappropriate beliefs guide their judgements, not to mention the corporate lobbying driving interests. Governments took no action, the rich exploited the poor, we were quite frankly barbarians compared to where we are today, and even now there's still problems. But… knowing all that, I think that my first thought as to why I would initially want to leave Earth is so that I could escape the natural craziness that came saddled with my species. I suppose I wanted to find something different, something that I felt was more worthwhile of my time."_

" _Did you find it?" Nya asked, eyes locked onto mine._

 _I answered with a firm squeeze in a one-armed hug. "All that and more."_

 _The two of us fell silent for a few more minutes, enjoying the natural lull as we cuddled beneath the tree. Nya rested her helmeted head upon my chest while her vocabulator barely projected the soft sounds of her breathing. Now I genuinely believed that I was going to fall asleep right on this hill – the temperature was perfect, the soothing sounds of the waves and the chirping of the birds was providing the perfect white noise, and to top it all off I had a lovely quarian curled up against me. If it weren't for the last thing that I had hoped to achieve today on my agenda, I really would have succumbed to sleep right then and there._

" _Hey… Nya?"_

" _Mmm?" she mumbled. Sounded like she was about to nod off as well._

" _Just out of curiosity, how content are you right now?"_

" _How content am I?" she repeated as she struggled to lift her head back up again. She looked up to the sky in thought. "Honestly, I really don't think that I can be any happier at this moment. I'm in this wonderful place, I've had a great day… and I'm with you. Yeah, I'm actually quite sure that this is the most content I could ever hope to get."_

 _Now my heart, previously calm the entire day, began to pound like a war drum that it would be impossible for Nya not to notice. Before she could inquire as to the sudden uptick of my vitals, I gave her a look of pure adoration as I withdrew an envelope from my jacket pocket._

" _Well then, I think you might want to reconsider your statement," I replied as I handed the envelope to Nya._

 _She held the item in her hands for a brief moment. "What is this?"_

" _Open it and see."_

 _Her interest piqued, Nya immediately tore the envelope open, causing shredded paper to fly everywhere. From inside, she plucked a small, circular object that shone wherever the light managed to scythe through the leaves above us._

 _Nya turned the ring over in her hands, examining it. She seemed fascinated with its structure, as I figured she would be. The ring was colored a mildly dark gray, with a dull sheen even though it had been recently polished so that it was spotless. There were no markings adorning the wide band of brushed metal, a featureless landscape._

 _Eagerly, I held my breath, waiting for Nya to say something until I could bear it no longer. Perhaps she did not fully understand yet what was being offered._

" _Do… do you like it?" I asked._

" _It's… Sam, it's very elegant," Nya said breathily as she now tested the ring's pliability. "You got me a ring? Why? Is there something symbolic behind this?"_

" _I'm guessing that quarians have little use for jewelry, huh?" I answered around a shaky grin._

 _Nya shook her head. "We've… it's not something that is prevalent in our culture. Quarians never wore such items as it was perceived that wearing precious metals or minerals was considered rather gaudy. After all, we needed such materials to keep our fleet running and anyone who adorned themselves with those materials stood out as being particularly selfish."_

" _Oh…" I said as my face fell, crestfallen. "Had I known… I would have gotten you something else. Done a little more research…"_

" _Oh no, no, no!" Nya quickly protested as she held the ring up. "This is not gaudy, Sam! I meant that what we consider jewelry are any of those brightly colored metals or enormous gemstones that pose no significant use. Little items - small tokens of appreciation - like this were actually very common among my people, things that did not draw much attention to themselves. This is… actually, this is a beautiful ring. So smooth, such perfect elemental composition. Light as well… titanium?"_

" _Correct," I said as I breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad I guessed right that you'd like it. Generally, it's considered tradition for an offered ring like this to contain a diamond, and that the ring should be comprised of gold. Almost chose one like that for you, but then again, nothing about our relationship can be considered traditional and I figured that a 'gaudy' style, as you put it, would not be right for you. Glad I went for the titanium one, then."_

" _Tradition? Tradition for what?"_

 _Oh, man. She really did not know._

 _The beginnings of a laugh began to bubble up from my throat and I was on the edge of my seat with giddiness. "For being a bigger part of my life from now on. There's no counting how many dumb mistakes I've made in my life but I believe that the biggest mistake I could ever make is not going forward with this. I've known it for some time because I love you with all my heart and I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Nya…" I finally took a breath, "I want to marry you."_

" _Kee…" the ring tumbled from Nya's hand onto the blanket with a soft plunk. "…lah," she gasped._

 _I reached over, the shaking in my hands now gone, and offered the ring up to Nya once again. "I want to be yours, Nya, if you would be mine. Will you be my wife?"_

 _Her hands instantly shot out and grabbed the ring from me. Nya wasted no time in sliding the ring onto her suited finger. A perfect fit. She held up her hand to view her newest adornment, eyes noticeably shining behind her crimson visor._

" _Of course I will," she sobbed matter-of-factly. "I will, Sam. I will." Her head then hung briefly. "I am such a bosh'tet. I didn't even realize what you had been asking me until-,"_

 _Nya trailed off as the impact of what just happened seemed to finally weigh down on her mind. Adrenaline and dopamine then poured into her muscles and spiked her breathing, causing her to helplessly shake with excitement. Nya leapt from where she had been sitting and onto me, pinning me down on the blanket like a predator pouncing on its prey. She really looked radiant with the sun shining around her, the various hues of her suit seemed to be amplified tenfold in the lighting, or perhaps that was just my imagination at work as I was currently experiencing a high of joy that I had never known before._

 _She said yes._

 _Now the moment was perfect – to be looked fondly upon for all time._

 _Still unable to properly voice any words, Nya resigned herself to lay down fully onto me, her hands resting on my cheeks while her helmeted head barely hovered an inch above mine. I too was just as ecstatic as she was, but it was mostly from seeing at how radically charged her spirits had become from introducing the topic of marriage. She wanted this as much as anyone could desire which had made her decision blindingly obvious, even before I had popped the question._

 _After all that had occurred, all the pain and unusual circumstances that I've been through, this was perhaps the easiest decision that I've ever made in years. Forget the fact that Nya was a different species than I was – such matters were perfectly acceptable in this day and age – I loved her and I truly wanted to be with her for as long as I could imagine._

 _There we were, two aliens rolling about on a hill on a sunny California day. A deconstruction of this image provided a rather intriguing picture for the future. The world (and in larger part, the galaxy) would not be fragmented from conflict or disaster, but everyone's ideologies would merge and combine in an effort to plant their views of normality amongst one another. Nya and I – two races sharing the same feelings – our interpretations of what constituted a perfect life were so similar. A union of words and bodies only came to us as being completely natural, simply right._

 _As she rubbed at my scalp, Nya finally elicited a faint noise of joy. "If I wasn't so worried about dying, I'd rip this helmet off right now so that I can kiss you."_

" _I'll gladly provide the next best thing," I said as I kissed Nya right on her vocabulator. It was not the same as kissing Nya directly on her lips, rough metal in lieu of warm skin, but it produced an almost similar effect in my now-fiancée._

" _You were right," Nya moaned as I now gravitated to kissing her suited neck. "_ Now _I cannot possibly be more content."_

 _I chuckled while I nuzzled Nya in the midst of our hug. "Am I allowed to say 'I told you so'?"_

 _The quarian playfully shook her helmeted head. "You're an impossible human, but you're my human now. I wouldn't have it any other way."_

" _Don't tell me you expected this?"_

" _Sam, I've been dreaming of this moment for a long time. Not that I knew you were going to propose here… but I just had this intuition that it was going to happen eventually. I don't know how it is for humans, but quarian girls spend a lot of time thinking about who they're going to bond with for life. You know how risky it is for us to take on partners that we sort of imprint on our lovers a lot stronger than humans do. The longer I loved you, the more certain I was of the future. I think that all the months since we've started dating were just continued validation for me. I just… one day… kind of knew that we would end up like this."_

" _I think that I knew for a long time as well. You're not like any other women that I've met before, Nya. You've influenced so much of my life up to this point that I cannot foresee anything in the future occurring without you. You're my other half, Nya, plain and simple."_

 _Her visor gently rested against my forehead as the quarian sighed, her eyes shut. "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me," she admitted before her entire body shuddered in glee. "I never would have thought that I could have fallen so hard for a human. My shipmates constantly teased me, saying that the only species capable of loving me would be a krogan and that no one would care for me because of my 'tainted name.' What I wouldn't give to have them see me now…"_

" _They'd see a confident woman who had, despite all the odds, managed to achieve her dreams of becoming a pilot, and found someone who cared about her along the way," I assured as a hand began to move to the back of Nya's neck, underneath her hood. "The story behind your family never impacted how I felt and anyone who claims otherwise is so shallow that they probably will never find happiness in another person like you and I have. I fell hard too, Nya. Believe me, I fell very hard."_

 _Nya laughed as she held my hand to her neck, no doubt smiling sweetly. "Sam."_

" _Nya."_

" _Take me home."_

" _Right now?"_

 _She nodded definitely. "Yes. Right now."_

" _How come?" I swallowed._

 _Her eyes turned devilish as she shook with a simper. "I want to show you exactly how far I've fallen for you. I want to show you everything."_

 _As one of her hands began to slide up my front, starting at my stomach, I noticed that my heart was starting to beat a lot faster again and that my brow started to become a little sweaty. Male obliviousness aside, there was no mistaking the obvious innuendo in Nya's words._

 _I gave a sly grin. "Anything you had in mind? I would be happy to make the night all about you, if you would like."_

" _Then the first thing that we're going to do is this," Nya panted as she now walked her fingers over my chest. "I'm going to pin you onto the bed… straddle your head with my legs… and finally, ever so slowly, I am going to watch your expression and feel your mouth on me as I sit on your fa-,"_

* * *

Woah! I… don't think that last part ever happened in real life.

With a start, my eyes snapped open and I sat up in bed, sheets crumpling around me. Bewildered, I scratched my head while the interior of the _Obtruder's_ cabin slowly came into view. No longer was I tumbling around on a hill with my wife back on Earth after having just proposed to her; I was back in one of the sleeping cabins aboard my yacht that was currently en route to Rannoch as part of our vacation.

Despite my quick awakening though, I felt rather refreshed, relaxed, if not a little disappointed that the dream had to end so soon… or end at all, for that matter.

Actually, it might have been the best damn sleep I've had in quite some time. Chalk that down as a win in my book.

I looked to the other side of the bed and found it empty. There was a slight indentation as the only sign that Nya had spent the night next to me, but nothing else apart from that. As I began to get dressed with the intention of locating her, a quick and quiet rapping upon the doorframe caused me to turn my head just as I finished pulling on my pants.

"You're up! I was just about to wake you," Nya said as she strode into the room. "I would have done it earlier but you looked so peaceful. I didn't want to disturb you."

"I'm kind of glad you didn't," I said as I now laced up my shoes. I had thrown a snug long-sleeved shirt over me and had attached my pistol to my belt for added protection. "I was actually having a good dream for once, believe it or not."

"Really?" Nya's head tilted in interest as she moved to sit on the bed beside me. "What were you dreaming about?"

"The day that I asked you to marry me."

Nya laughed. "Yeah, that definitely sounds like a good dream. Wish that _I_ could relive it, now that you mention it. It was one of the best days of my life."

"As it was for me. Although… the dream did kind of start to go a bit off the rails near the end."

"Uh oh," came Nya's reply as exasperation crept into her tone. "What happened?"

"For some reason, you were so in the moment that you started to insist that I take you home right away so that we could engage in a wide array of decidedly un-Christian-like behavior."

Nya's expression was blank, confused.

"Sex," I clarified. "I believe you wanted me to perform a lot of oral sex upon you. A _lot_."

A brief moment passed before Nya started to howl with laughter and she had to clutch her belly because she became out of breath in short order. This continued for about half a minute while the two of us shared the rather entertaining but brief instance together. Tears were staining my eyes, slightly producing a burning sensation, and I wiped them clear while Nya also began to calm down.

"Ah… ahh haa," Nya sniffled, "of all the things your brain just had to add. Sex? You pervert."

"It's not like I can _control_ my dreams," I defended in between occasional bouts of laughter. "Humans don't have a power like that!"

"Uh huh. You just like to see me naked."

"I do like seeing you naked," I affirmed immediately. "Maybe that's why I dreamed up a scenario like that at the end of the dream – two separate memories of you that have a deep emotional impact combined into one. Hell, if that had actually been what had happened, I probably would not be too surprised."

"If I recall correctly, we just lay on that hill for a while before going back to the hotel in town. After that we simply rested on the bed and spent the entire night whispering to the other."

"Yeah, and at the end of the night, your suit was still on."

"Pretty much," Nya agreed.

I yawned as I reached for my inhaler and pills on the nightstand. No rest for the injured. As much as I liked to complain about it, taking my required dosage was getting easier and easier with each day. I think that meant that the medication was working.

After the medi-gel's stinging dissipated, I pounded my chest to clear my airway. "Where's Rie and Chandler, by the way?"

Nya gestured towards the doorway. "They're outside."

That caught me for a moment. "Wait… outside? What do you mean, 'outside'?"

My wife just chuckled and led me to her feet. Swiftly, she hurried me over to the main airlock door, the opening that separated us from the infernal chill of space. Curious as to what she was doing, I hung back as Nya input the directive for the door to open, but instead of ice slicing at my skin and my breath being violently sucked from my lungs, a warm wind breezed inside and the soft heat of a distant sun blinked upon me.

"I mean, we're _here_ , Sam," Nya stated giddily.

Lifting a hand to ward the light away from my eyes, I stumbled tiredly out of the yacht and onto the ground. My shoes crunched on fine, red-colored dirt, coating them with a thin layer of silt. The air had a dry taste on my tongue, very low humidity and a hint of vegetation.

As my eyes slowly adjusted to the brightness, I could finally behold Rannoch before me.

The first thing that I noted was that the landing platform was located upon a tall plateau standing a few hundred feet above the ground. The plateau was large enough to accommodate at least fifteen frigates, vessels more than four times the size of the _Obtruder_. Right now, most of the pads lay vacant, with only a few small shuttles currently occupying the provided space.

Slowly gaining my bearings, I could spot similar rock formations off in the distance. Various plateaus, buttes, and other impressive towers of stone stood proudly above the ground, rounded and sculpted from time and the elements. They interrupted the horizon, creating a jagged and cratered landscape marred with canyons and mountains occasionally brushed by the dirty green color of vegetation. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight.

The sky was colored a hazy orange, lit by the lone sun that hovered above us. A few clouds speckled against the light, obscuring a clear line to the stars that shimmered unusually clearly.

About ten miles to the northeast lay the ocean, not at all unlike the view of the Pacific back on Earth. It shimmered and sparkled much like any sea, a vast canopy of blue to offset the arid landscape that otherwise stretched across the planet. In between the sea and the plateau lay a large network of hastily constructed roads and buildings in a grid pattern. A city. The capitol of Rannoch, twelve and a half miles wide in diameter.

E'ryda. Land's Edge.

"It's… amazing," I breathed as I slowly took a few steps forward. "This is your world, Nya?"

"I guess so," she said as she matched my pace at my side, her gaze directed out into the distance. "I've only been on the surface once before, but that wasn't for very long. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this world… to understand what Rannoch means to me, as a quarian."

"It's your _home_ , and we're going to discover that meaning for ourselves. Together."

As I walked near the lip of the cliff, I was in awe at my surroundings but other little tidbits were beginning to prove distracting. I had to tug at my shirt a bit because already I was starting to get a little hot. I checked my omni-tool and found, to my shock, that the current air temperature was a rather whopping 119 degrees Fahrenheit, about 48 degrees Celsius. I guessed that the reason why it did not feel any hotter than my thermostat indicated was the fact that Rannoch's climate was rather devoid of water – a dry heat. Even though Rannoch's sun, Tikkun, was only a K class star and 90% the mass of Sol, the environment on this planet was more arid due to the fact that the planet had formed closer to its sun than Earth had.

I also noticed that there was a distinct reduction in plant life than what I was expecting. Perhaps photosynthetic life here was more dependent on water tended to grow near easily accessible sources on this planet. The few scraggly trees that I saw dotting the landscape were mostly all trunk while their leaves were small and stringy like a pine's. A few bushes managed to sprout up from the cracked earth, but the leaves were colored a dull olive and waxy in texture. These were plants that were hardy in nature and had evolved to last with minimal moisture.

My eyes burned a bit before my vision seemed to slightly darken. I blinked several times to make sure that I was not hallucinating or going blind. No… I was fine, actually. On the contrary, it seemed that I could see a little better now that, for some reason, all incoming light upon my corneas had been miraculously reduced. My vision was slightly darker but I could see in greater detail now that I did not have to keep a hand upward in order to protect myself from the sun's rays.

Could it be… that my implants were reacting to the amount of light being received and had adjusted the intake to prevent my eyes from becoming damaged? Like putting on a pair of sunglasses? If so, that was wicked cool. I could definitely see the advantages of this, but I wondered why I had not been notified of this beforehand.

There was still a bit of itching on my eyeballs, so I tilted my head back and applied a few drops to alleviate the pain. There was the usual couple seconds of feeling the annoying fluid blur my vision before it seeped into the tissue, evaporating the itch along with it. I took a deep breath, relieved that I had nothing else to endure.

"You okay?" Nya asked as she sidled up to me, her tone light but serious at the same time. She had presumably seen me apply my drops, which was why she was asking. "Just want to check up on you this morning, make sure you're all right."

"Not that bad," I admitted. "Eyes aren't giving me that much trouble. The usual discomfort, nothing too debilitating."

"And your throat?"

"Nothing to report there either."

Satisfied, Nya gave me a gentle pat on my arm, proud of how stoic I was in the face of my injuries. I smiled back at her, signaling my relaxation before I involuntarily straightened at the arrival of a quarian attendant out in the corner of my eye. I cleared my throat in expectation of the official and fit my hand into Nya's with a squeeze.

"Welcome to Rannoch!" the new quarian greeted as she shuffled up to us. She sounded youthful and her enviro-suit was lined with tan streaks that matched the color of her visor. "I'm Alehf'Venate, consul for our Office of Inter-Galactic Affairs. What brings you to the city of E'ryda today?"

"Travel, actually," I replied as I used my omni-tool to display my visa. Nya did the same as well. "We're here to take a look around the planet, as it was important to my wife that she gets to step foot on her homeworld, finally."

Alehf looked at the visas and jotted down the information on her datapad. "Ooh!" she gushed. "Husband and wife, how romantic! Just like Commander Shepard himself!"

Nya and I shared a look. "I'm sorry…" Nya paused for a moment. "Like Commander Shepard? What did you mean by that?"

"Oh," the consul tittered, "I simply meant that you two reminded me of Shepard, what with his marriage to the young admiral and all that. It's so sweet. He does value his privacy these days so I'm not really the person to ask about his whereabouts, if you came to get a glimpse of him."

I waved a hand to disregard the notion. "We're not here to solicit an autograph from Shepard. I'm sure the man has had enough of being in the limelight these days as well as dodging well-wishers. No, we're just interested in getting this ship resupplied before heading off to the… what was the name of it again, Nya?"

"The Dimerian Canyon," Nya finished as she brought up the map on her omni-tool. "The place that Iroa mentioned. He said that we should definitely check it out first after resupplying here."

Mention of the elder quarian gave me pause. I still wondered about Iroa from time to time, what his actual purpose to being in that hospital was. He had provided some semblance of comfort and was very polite, but there was still something about that man that remained hidden from me, something that I felt that I should have picked up on earlier. It was because he was still an enigma did he intrigue me so.

I very much wanted to meet him again.

Alehf leaned in and squinted at the map. "Huh, I've never heard of the Dimerian Canyon before… but, then again, I'm still not completely up to date on all the landmarks here on Rannoch. There's just so many! You're going to have to tell me what it's like – I'm always so eager to see new things on this planet! Did you guys need anything before you head out today?"

"Just a refuel and a diagnostic of the ship," I said. "We're probably going to go into town and pick up some supplies – food, clips, that sort of thing. Actually…" I halted as I swung to face Nya, "Rie and Chandler. Did they already leave to go to the city?"

"They did, as a matter of fact," Alehf said in Nya's stead. "I'm assuming you're asking about the other two individuals that departed your craft before you, yes? They came out about fifteen minutes ago, showed their credentials and hitched a ride down the cliff via speeder. There's a queue on the north side of the plateau where you can arrange for transport."

"Well, that answers that question," I rubbed my hands together. "Oh, and there's one more thing that I might as well ask, since it's been all over the news lately. The current political climate, are there any zones that you would recommend we stay well away from?"

Alehf visibly bristled. The conflict on Rannoch was not too popular over here as well, apparently.

"Ah, you're referring to the civil war. Well, if the Dimerian Canyon is as far as you're going to go, then you should be well away from the bulk of the combat zones. The fighting between the Admiralty and the Loyalists is pretty much all contained near the northernmost continent. That's where the majority of the geth hubs are located."

"What, is Xen deliberately trying to reactivate _more_ geth?" Nya asked in astonishment.

"It's hard to say at this point as there has either been a lack of definitive proof or the Admiralty is keeping such matters contained. Regardless, I'd avoid that area if I were you. There haven't been any reports of any civilian ships being fired upon, but that's probably because no one has been dumb enough to chance it. In any case, I've heard that Xen's forces have been faltering somewhat, so I can only guess that she's getting desperate enough to reprogram geth units to fight for her. The woman was always crazy, if you ask me."

I scratched my chin thoughtfully. "Yeah, you're not going to have to worry about us. Trust me, we're very keen about playing things safe at this point. One war was enough for the two of us."

"Indeed," Alehf nodded somberly. "Very, very true. But, if you do manage to spot anything suspicious, please take care to inform the Admiralty forces. Any tip helps if we're ever going to stop this fighting."

Nya stepped up, her gaze severe. "We'll certainly do that if we do spot anything out of the ordinary. Thank you for your advice, Alehf'Venate."

The consul tenderly placed one of her hands upon Nya's shoulder, the action warm and welcoming. "And welcome home, fleet-sister. I would say ' _Keelah se'lai_ ' but I don't think it would be appropriate, considering we're on the homeworld as we speak. Instead I shall simply wish you: _Eh'van shallus_. You have returned to where you began, Nya'McLeod. You are finally home."

Through eternity, our Paths unite.

 _Eh'van shallus_ , indeed.

But I now I wanted to know how much Nya considered this place home… and if she truly wanted to return to where she began. Would she drop everything to be with her people once more? Is that what she really wanted? Could _I_ accommodate such a request from her?

As usual, I could not decide upon an answer I liked.

* * *

Hours Later

The detour to E'ryda had been, all things considered, modestly successful. All in all, we had spent around 6 hours in the streets of the city, either taking in the sights, purchasing items to use during our trip, or having a bite to eat. There was still plenty of time left to use up because a day on Rannoch lasted 32 hours. By that clock, it could be considered the early afternoon right about now.

We had met up with Chandler and Rie in the city and had continued on as a group to run our errands. To be honest, "city" was perhaps a loose way of describing what E'ryda really was: a ghetto.

The unfortunate thing about the place was that, after spending three centuries on board ships, the quarians had forgotten the basics of traditional architecture and construction. All their culture and history of building with sturdy materials such as stone and wood had been lost, leaving them only scraps from their ships to formulate their abodes with. Around 95% of the buildings that we passed by were made up from a sad combination of spare bits of sheet metal, shoddily cut pieces of wood, and rope to tie it all together. All things considered, E'ryda was nothing more than a squalid collection of poorly constructed huts, which unfairly represented the tough and determined people that lived here.

The few quarians who had enough skill to actually work with stone were few and far between, especially for a colony like this whose population numbered in the millions. A few buildings made out of the stronger material stood tall and mighty amongst their peers, even rising a couple stories above the favela. Apparently there was even talk about outsourcing alien assistance and materials to construct longer-lasting buildings, which sounded like a reasonable idea if the quarians ever wanted to match the level of sophistication the humans, turians, or asari placed into their structures today. It would be quite a while before they would ever get to that point, though.

Despite the shabby conditions, most of the quarians that we conversed with seemed to be rather upbeat about their current accommodations. They were not complaining at where they ended up because, in their heads, this was the dream they've held all this time: to set foot onto the homeworld once more. Hell, the most they'd ever had as a residence on the flotilla was probably a shared bunk in a room smaller than a New York City studio apartment – owning a hut was probably a major step up for these people. If they truly found happiness in achieving that dream, then all the power to them for seeing the good in what most would call a sorry situation. It was to be admired and respected at the resolve of the quarians.

On more than one occasion, we would see a few groups of very young quarians in their tiny suits scurry past us on the tight streets, laughing and playing with each other. This happened so frequently that I had turned to one of the shopkeepers for clarification earlier.

"How come there are so many children just running around?" I had asked.

The shopkeeper had only shrugged. "They're orphans. Their parents were killed during the war. They group up like this because they have no one to care for them."

The anguished looks that Nya and Rie had whenever they saw a child after that was heartbreaking, and I wondered how people back on the Citadel would react if they learned of the terrible conditions here. Never before had I wanted to make a charitable donation as I did now. Think of the good a simple orphanage could do here, to provide these children with a loving home.

Kids. They should not have to suffer for sins made in the past. They deserved much better than this.

We picked up additional foodstuffs without any additional distractions to take back to the ship; there had not been much of a selection and it was all overpriced but that was probably accounting for the huge markup that the quarians had to place on their wares due to the large import taxes imposed on them. After all, Rannoch is very far away from most of the major galactic hubs and the simple truth is that it costs more to ship items longer distances. As money was not an issue for us, we purchased the necessary supplies without complaint, and I even picked up a few more thermal clips for my gun just in case.

At my hip rested an M-358 Talon pistol, my current self-defense weapon of choice. I had lost my Phalanx pistol during the Battle of London and had not managed to recover it, so I had to buy another pistol as a replacement afterward. I had settled on the Phalanx for a few reasons: it was human manufactured so it was more comfortable to hold in my hand, it had a rotating ammunition block to save on excess heat and recoil, and it packed so much of a punch that it could almost be comparable to a shotgun in compact form. Thanks to the additional muscle training I had undergone since then, I had the capabilities in my wrist muscles to handle such violent recoil (not to mention the ability to actually aim the thing in order to hit something now). If I would not be able to intimidate someone from my bulky frame, then perhaps the mere sight of this weapon could do the trick.

The pistol was more of an afterthought at this point because I was not anticipating shooting anyone (perish the thought) now that we had arrived at the Dimerian Canyon after only a ten minute hop to the neighboring continent. After touching down, us as a quartet practically leaped out of the ship, eager to explore the area and to create long-lasting memories for which neither of us could forget.

"I'll be damned," Rie said, awed. "Whoever recommended this place to you should be sent a gift basket or something, because this is _incredible_."

Incredible was right, as was the suggestion to send a gift basket – which was something that I was going to have to do once I found out Iroa's whereabouts because, even at first glance, his advice had paid off in spades.

The canyon the four of us were standing in was certainly impressive to behold. Sandy stone walls towered at least twenty stories on either side of us, the rocks multicolored the farther up the cliffs you looked. The slit of sky that was unobstructed by the walls glowed various hues of orange and purple while stars glimmered strongly as a sparkling backdrop. Comparatively, it was not as breathtaking as the Grand Canyon back on Earth, but this place did have one major difference that made it all the more rewarding to see in person.

The entire valley was completely covered in green vegetation. Unlike the hardy shrubs or bare scraps of trees that normally dotted Rannoch's landscape, the plant life here was much more vibrant and diverse. Tall tufts of grass sprung up from the soil, causing the dry and pebble-infested ground to be completely covered up. Long vines snaked up through the cracks in the rock, white-barked trees blossomed vividly green leaves, and the sweet smell of flowers wafted into our nostrils.

If that wasn't enough, then the bustling river surging through the middle of the valley certainly helped to entrench the complete and utter natural beauty of the area. The water was so clean and clear that it took on an unnatural bluish hue. If I looked upriver a bit I could see the river begin to well right about where the canyon wall ended a couple hundred meters to our right.

An underground spring. That was why all the plants here were visibly healthier than the ones roasting on Rannoch's surface from the star Tikkun. All life requires water to survive and to have access to some of the purest water that could naturally be created had to be the one reason why there was a far greater density of organic matter here than anywhere else I'd seen on the planet so far. The fact that the canyon provided a great deal of shade for these plants also had to be a factor for the ability for them to suitably thrive.

I parted the grass as I walked up to a part of the stream where the flow was calmer. I placed my hand in the water for a second before I recoiled in shock.

"Chilly," I said as I shook the water off my hand. "The underground well must be very deep down for the water to be this cold."

Not surprisingly, Chandler and Rie mimicked my actions despite my words, and they too exclaimed out loud when they found the water to be not quite the temperature that they had been expecting.

"Think you can go swimming in this?" Chandler asked.

"Probably not a good idea," I considered. "There's probably millions of tiny organisms in the water – all dextro chirality by the way – so you're definitely going to get sick if you accidentally take in a mouthful of water. Not something I'm willing to risk."

"Good point. But you guys could swim," Chandler now pointed to Nya and Rie, both of whom looked rather nonplussed.

Rie's eyes turned sheepish. "You do know that turians are basically incapable of swimming, right?"

"It's not that hard, you just move your arms and kick your legs and-,"

Nya shook her head as she stepped forward. "Uh, no, it's not quite like that, Chandler. Turians can't swim because their bone structure is denser than yours. They've literally got metal in their body which prevents them from floating."

"…So… why can't you-,"

"I don't swim," Nya cut him off.

That statement was not entirely true as it just so happened that I had been giving Nya occasional lessons at one of the hospital's private pools. Doctors had the privilege of using these pools all to themselves as a form of stress therapy (comes with the job) and Nya had expressed interest in joining me one time, just to see how she could fare. The pools themselves were sterile, of course. Not surprisingly, she was not all that strong or graceful of a swimmer, but she could at least stay afloat for a few minutes which was a greater amount of time than the average quarian could muster, to say the least.

The flip side was that although she technically could swim, she just could not swim with her suit on. The water would either screw up her suit's electrical processes or would easily overflow her oxygen intakes and cause her to drown. Plus it would be a bitch to dry the suit out fully if it got completely drenched. Thus, she had to swim sans suit and I knew that there was no way in hell that Nya was keen on demonstrating her lackluster skills in such a revealing manner.

Telling Chandler the white lie was much less awkward than the truth.

Out of habit, I glanced back the way we had entered. There had been a rather large rock outcropping outside the canyon big enough for the _Obtruder_ to land with enough space for a few more ships. A tight channel connected the landing zone and the valley within the canyon, which is where we had traversed and had summarily found ourselves here. It was much better than parking on the top of the canyon itself and wasting many hours trying to find a safe route down. Thank god for laser topography maps.

The remarkable thing was that past the rock outcropping of the landing zone we could view yet another valley, this one miles across, that contained an entire jungle ecosystem, presumably fueled by the spring which dropped down into the new valley to provide life to the area. Truly a lost paradise, untouched by man (or alien) for centuries. It just reminded us of how significant our actual presence here was.

Rie and Chandler broke off from the group to do some exploring near a rock face on the other side of the river. Partly submerged boulders served as a makeshift path to cross the water without getting wet, although Chandler nearly ate dirt as his foot momentarily slid upon some algae. While they started hiking, Nya and I casually strolled along the river's edge, getting closer and closer to the source.

We continued walking, snaking our way between trees as we strove to travel in the straightest possible path. It was much cooler in the shade from the trees, but even so it was still a rather sweltering 90 degrees. Good thing that my clothing was breathable otherwise I would be drowning in my own sweat by now.

"How the hell can you be in that enviro-suit and not complain?" I sputtered as I fanned myself with my shirt. "Did you equip an air conditioner in there recently?"

Nya gave me a look like I was an idiot. "I'm adaptable to the heat. We've had these suits long before we had to leave this planet, you know. After all, this is the _quarian_ homeworld. Our bodies are attuned to handle this sort of environment."

"Fair enough, fair enough," I raised my hands in defense.

A few minutes later we reached the spring itself at the end of the canyon after tramping through the undergrowth. If it was possible, the water was even bluer here from where it bubbled up from the hole near the wall. I was now more tempted than ever to just rush in and do a cannonball into the spring, but the cold temperatures and risk of getting poisoned from ingesting incompatible amino acids were the only things preventing me from doing so.

In any case, there were a large array of boulders at the water's edge, so we clambered up onto the nearest and flattest one so that we could sit down upon it. Our legs dangling over the edge, Nya and I spent the next ten minutes in complete silence as we took in the majestic surroundings the canyon had to offer. The water gurgled, the leaves rustled, and bat-like creatures chittered as the flapped merrily away in the air.

A thought chipped away at my mind as I glanced at the bats, leaving me frowning in concern.

"Rannoch doesn't have any alpha predators, does it?" I asked Nya. "I mean, it's been three hundred years since quarians last set foot here so isn't there the chance that dangerous wild animals are roaming the area?"

Nya leaned back, using her hands to support her torso. "From what I've read we were pretty much the apex predators of our time. I've read up on some of Earth's animals and I can definitely assure you that Rannoch has nothing as terrifying as what you're probably already used to."

"Phew," I breathed a little easier. "It had just occurred to me, with us being out deep in the desert and all. I mean, I had no idea whether there'd be some kind of animal lying in wait, ready to pounce upon us." My hand automatically reached for my pistol as I spoke, but merely brushed the handle as I consciously gained control of my actions.

"Paranoid much?"

"Suspicious, more like it. After all, when you're on a planet with no insect or parasitic life inhabiting it, one might think it too good to be true. After all, you've never had to live with spiders before."

" _Eeerugh_ ," Nya gave a full-body shudder. "I'd never heard of spiders before I visited any place with humans before. All those legs and… _gah!_ How could you humans ever stay sane with those around?"

"Good question," I mused before I lightly nudged Nya in the ribs. "But having a broom easily accessible certainly helps."

"Doesn't make me feel any better."

We momentarily ran out of things to talk about and simply relegated ourselves to staring some more and the gurgling spring. I must have had a blank expression on my face because I quickly realized that Nya was staring at me in interest.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked me.

I bit my lip in thought. "Just considering a few things. This planet, your people, all that. I've just been mulling that if you really wanted to get a house here, I'd be totally down for it."

"Really?" Nya looked surprised. "You'd be fine living away from the Citadel? Away from Earth?"

"If your heart was really set on it, I'd support it. Besides, no insects is a huge plus in my book. One less thing to worry about. I mean, look at this place!" I swept my arms around the expansive spring. "It's beautiful! If you've ever been to the Mojave Basin on Earth, I actually think that Rannoch looks a lot like it. With these colored rock formations, the level of vegetation, not to mention the similar temperature, but if this is any inkling of what kinds of stuff we can see on Rannoch, then I'd be up for staying a little bit longer. It's not all unfamiliar, but it's certainly exciting."

I put my arm around Nya's shoulders and she leaned against me, a bit exhausted at the growing notions that today brought. I held her upon that rock, making sure to indulge her in as much contact with my body as she wanted.

"It's so much to take in," Nya stammered out.

"I know, honey. I know," I patted the back of her helmet. "But it's a very striking world. Untouched by your people for centuries. Why, we could be among the first people to set foot in this place since the quarians' exile."

Nya sighed. "Everything here is a first for everybody. For most of my life… for most of every living quarian's life, we've never known Rannoch before. It's always been in the back of our mind… like a myth, a future practically unattainable. And now, all of a sudden, we have our world and… and that's it."

"You sound disappointed."

"Because I didn't know what it would feel like when we got to this moment," Nya gesticulated with her hands energetically. "I had no idea what to expect. It was literally one day we had no homeworld… and then the next day it was ours. It was just so sudden that we had made peace with the geth that I still don't really believe that we're on Rannoch at all."

With a smile, I bent over and scooped up a handful of sand and pebbles. I let the tiny rocks filter through my fingers to clatter down to the ground below. "Seems pretty real to me," I said as I wiped my hands.

Nya laughed as she mimicked my actions. She held aloft a small pile of sand and silt before she gently tipped her hand and deposited the contents onto the canyon floor. "I know," she said. "It's just a lot to think about. My people have a home now, it's just a matter of determining what to do with it. Maybe helping my people do something about it should be at the forefront of my duties."

"You're thinking of assisting your people with the recolonization efforts, then?"

"Perhaps," Nya said as she stood up and dusted herself off. "I haven't really decided yet. They need all the able-bodied people they can get to assist with the colonies… but I still don't know if want to because… because… my people treated me like… like a…"

"Like an outcast?" I tentatively finished for her.

Nya gave a slow, somber nod. "Yes," she acknowledged. "They did that to me, put me on the lowest rung imaginable. One step away from an exile… all because my mother had been stricken from the flotilla. No doubt it means little to them at this point, but it's something that I could never forget… or perhaps forgive."

"No one's making you forget anything or forgive anyone," I assured Nya as I now stood up and placed my hands upon her shoulders. "You're the only one who should decide for yourself. If you believe that your people don't deserve your help because they treated you like a pariah, then that's perfectly acceptable. You're not going to find any judgment from me, the one person who understands you best."

Nya swayed in place, nearly overcome by an emotion too complex to properly describe. It was hard to determine whether Nya was looking to me to give her an answer to her quandary, but I knew that I could not properly give her a solution that was unbiased. If it really did all come down to me, I would have Nya tell her people to ' _Fuck off_ ' and live with me far away from them for the rest of our lives. How they treated her was unforgivable in my book (memories of that bastard Vhen weighed painfully close by) but to comprehend all the collective sorrow and pain that the quarian race shared was something that no human could fully understand. Could there have been a rhyme or reason for their treatment of my wife? Possibly. But I would most likely hate the explanation.

It was her life. Her decision. I could only stand by and watch.

"Sam… I…" Nya shakily placed her palm upon my chest. "There's something I need to tell you. More like ask you, actually. More important than Rannoch, actually."

"What?" What could be more important than Rannoch to her?

"Do…" Nya took a deep breath, trying to force out words that were seemingly latched to her throat, unwilling to budge. "Did you ever consider having…"

" _Oy, lovebirds!_ " a sudden cry echoed in the canyon.

The two of us jumped at the same time and looked over to find Chandler and Rie halfway up a slope on the cliff side, about a couple dozen meters above us. They were waving and looked excited. Clearly they wanted to tell us something.

"You're going to have to yell back, I can't," I quickly told Nya, indicating the scar on my throat.

" _What is it?!_ " she hollered at the two with a little more anger than I was expecting.

"You've got to come see this!"

"Oh, that's certainly descriptive," I muttered mainly to myself.

"See _what?_!" Nya echoed my sentiment.

"There's a whole cave system back here! It goes on and on into the mountain! Come check it out with us!"

Turning to my wife, I simply shrugged. My natural curiosity had been piqued, especially with the chance to do some good old-fashioned spelunking. "Guess it beats sitting around on a rock all day. You up for some exploring, Nya?"

"I…" Nya stumbled for a second, her train of thought derailed. "Okay. Yeah, let's do it."

I clapped my hands energetically, our previous conversation already forgotten, as I hopped off the rock to leave. "Should be fun at least. I haven't been in a cave since… the hell is that?"

The two of us halted in our tracks, indeed sensing the same thing. Something was amiss and it was an unusual sensation that befell our ears. It started as a low thrum but quickly picked up into a dull whine and finally into a full-bodied roar of a spaceship's sublight drive. The vibrations from the nearby ship caused the pebbles on the riverbank to clatter upon themselves, creating an excruciating clacking sound as they tumbled from the cliff onto the valley floor.

About half a minute after it was first heard, the outline of a quarian shuttle burst over the lip of the canyon, and the wall of sound from its engines slammed into us, nearly causing us to lose our balance. It was not a sleek ship, it actually looked more like a key than anything else. It had a long, thin section that housed the engine compartment as well as storage, and an upright circular section that contained the bridge and other interrelated crew stations. The ship itself did not linger but slowly continued out of sight, its velocity noticeably slowing as I realized that it meant to set down nearby.

"What do you think?" I inquired. "A Loyalist ship?"

"Don't know," Nya admitted. "I saw no markings."

"Whoever it belongs to, it's landing next to the _Obtruder_ ," I declared as I started to break off into a jog towards the ship. Nya immediately followed me, as did Rie and Chandler who were similarly scrambling down the slope they had just scaled.

We all converged near the canyon exit and quickly shimmied our way through the tight crevasse leading out towards the cliff overlooking the jungle below. Bursting back out into the sun, we skidded to a full stop once we managed to take in what was directly in front of us.

The ship had landed about fifty meters away from the _Obtruder_ and had lowered its boarding ramp before we had even arrived. Six quarian marines had already disembarked and had lined up to flank the ramp, their weapons at their sides in a position of nonaggression. I adjusted my hands to make sure that they were well away from the pistol at my belt – I did not want to provoke these guys for whatever reason.

"Why the hell are they here?" Rie whispered urgently. "Are they part of Xen's cadre?"

"Don't know just yet," Chandler said. "We're in an uncontested zone so there's no reason for them to be here. This has to be something else."

"We're noncombatants anyway," I muttered. "This isn't our fight. Let's just find out what they want and go from there."

Despite my words, it took a bit of an effort to make my legs proceed forward. My gait a lot slower than normal, I hesitantly approached the ship, carefully eying the marines on either side, just to make sure that they would not make any sudden moves in my direction… not that I had the ability to do something about it should that eventuality transpire.

I got about ten meters to the entrance of the ship and was about to ask the nearest marine if I should speak to the person in charge when a figure at the top of the ramp suddenly appeared and swiftly strode down to meet us. I had no idea what to expect with this person which meant that it came as a shock to me once I saw the quarian close up. I recognized this man.

" _Eh'van shallus_ ," the quarian said as he folded his hands behind his back formally.

It was Iroa.

"Y-You?" I stammered.

"Hello, Sam," the man kindly greeted, his eyes warm behind his rose-colored visor. The golden cloth that accentuated his enviro-suit seemed to shine even more brightly in the sunlight and his scarf flapped lazily in the breeze behind him. "I'm glad to see that you're up and about. Hello to you as well, Nyareth."

"Iroa?" Nya similarly blurted out in astonishment. "What are you doing here? What is the meaning of this?"

"I'm kind of curious of that myself," I added. "Why _are_ you here?"

The notion that Iroa was a Loyalist was not lost on me and since Nya considered all Loyalists to be traitors, I made sure to keep my guard up so that I could not be blindsided.

Iroa sheepishly looked down at the ground and kicked his feet in the dirt momentarily. "I can explain all in short order. I have to confess, though, that I haven't been entirely honest with you. Both of you."

"Honest about what?" Nya asked. "Does this have to do with the fact that you brought marines along?"

The man shook his head. "I apologize for their presence. Their being here is simply a formality." He turned his head to the group and barked out, "Back on the ship!" The marines immediately complied and turned to ascend the ramp without as much as a curious glance in our direction. "There now," Iroa proudly said. "Some privacy at last."

"I'm still not sure as to why this is happening at all," I stated flatly.

"Sam," Iroa interrupted as he held his hands out in an exasperated manner, "I'm sure you will be able to sympathize once everything is said and done. This was something that I had been planning for weeks, you see, and I actually was supposed to explain everything a lot earlier, but I had found out that you had been terribly injured and… the timing suddenly did not seem right. Not to lay something as significant as this upon tired shoulders."

"Wait… so, you're here for me?"

"Oh no, you misunderstand. I'm not here for you. I'm here for _her_."

Iroa lifted a finger to point past me at the person standing by my side. My wife. Nya.

"Me?" Nya exclaimed.

"Her?" I breathed.

Iroa nodded. "I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time, Nyareth. It's just that my duties have prevented me from doing so until now. I was so pleased to see that you had taken my advice for your vacation, by the way. The canyon is wondrous, isn't it?"

Nya gaped for a moment. "You were the one who suggested visiting this canyon in the first place! You made sure to bring it up so that you could meet us here! Why?"

"Why?" the man repeated as he shrugged. "Rannoch is a big place, big enough for anyone to get lost in. It's much easier to monitor a singular location on a planet that is 99 percent rural. I've simply been taking logs of this location day after day until we picked up an anomaly, your ship, on our radar. In that instant, I knew it had to be you. After all, there are very few of us that know this place exists. Even after a few years, we're nowhere close to examining all the nooks and crannies upon this planet. I figured that this would be the easiest way to reinitiate contact with you once more and it turns out that I was right."

"But why do you want to talk to me?" Nya asked. "And why did it have to be in this manner?"

"Because the nature of my role precludes me from venturing far outside my sphere of influence too often… and partly because this information is too important to be shared over a simple extranet call. I guess it's because I wanted to see your reaction in person."

I gently grabbed Nya's forearms and drew her closer to me, wary at our surroundings. "What information?" I growled.

"And this is where I've been the most dishonest with you," the quarian said as he gave a thoughtful bob of his head, suggesting at a hidden anguish. "I engineered this meeting… simply so that I could introduce myself to you, Nyareth."

"I…" my wife struggled, "I don't understand. You've already introduced yourself to me."

"Not entirely," Iroa sighed, almost with a hint of shame. "I only mentioned my first name, not my clan name. It's a bit odd, isn't it? To find oneself in this position. I daresay that this sort of encounter is very uncommon. I wonder, did you ever realize how I came to know your full name, Nyareth? You've only ever told me your nickname when we first met."

"I… I… what?" Nya stammered, completely flabbergasted. "How… how could you know…?"

Now Iroa drew himself up a few inches, making himself look grand against the backdrop of the cliff face. "The reason I know is because I have my paternal intuition to thank for that. You were born Nyareth'Kannos vas Neda, and I am Iroa'Kannos vas L'Haal. _Now_ we have been properly introduced… my _daughter_."

I instinctively held Nya against my chest as her hands clenched together fearfully. Unheard by anyone except me, she let out the tiniest cry of surprise.

Her horrified eyes were already starting to lose focus as she trembled.

* * *

 **A/N: ...And cliffhanger!**

 **Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time. I'll probably be able to squeeze in one more chapter before _Andromeda_ releases. After that it's going to be MIA for me until it's completed.**

 **Also, thank you to the people who leave reviews on this story. I must emphasize that reviews definitely help with the development of this story as they let me know if I'm doing anything wrong but also if I'm doing anything right. Besides, I love reading feedback from viewers.**

 **Iroa Entrance: "Arrival" by Jóhann Jóhannsson from the film _Arrival_. This was my personal favorite movie of 2016 and the very organic, very sparse score helped outline the loneliness and alienness of the encounters the protagonists faced. It's not the most palatable of soundtracks ever, but it fits the film like a glove.**


	8. Chapter 8: Ancestral Expansion

**A/N: If you need a refresher on Nya's family story, chapter 20 in The Quantum Error is where you should look. It will come in handy in case you are seeking additional details.**

* * *

Welcome to the new normality.

No one is ever prepared for something like this to occur. Not in such a dramatic fashion, at least. The odds of this happening to someone like me have to be microscopic at this point – which were already low considering the fact that I'm not an original resident of this universe.

It's true when I say that life is just a collection of crazy events, each one leading into the other, because my timeline has been anything but normal. Crazy, indeed.

There could hardly be a more impactful revelation than what had just occurred at the moment. After all, it's not every day that someone finds out that their father (stepfather in this case) is not dead but alive and standing right before them. Since I had never been expecting for such an event to ever occur, my subconscious was working overtime to process this new information, with the unfortunate side effect of me looking like an infirm as the gears began to turn.

Nya's father is alive.

Nya has a father.

Her father is right there – the man in the golden suit.

What the hell was happening?

My head was pounding, my eyes darting, heart thudding. It was getting harder and harder to latch onto any singular thought as I simultaneously processed and discarded all the variables that came to mind. My throat was dry, not hurting, but uncomfortable enough to the point that I wished I had something available to drink, to rid myself of the irritation. I did not even notice the minute shaking that was occurring in my hands at this moment.

I could not even begin to imagine how Nya was taking this if _I_ was in such a state of astonishment. It was a testament to her will and bravery that she had not fainted in a heap from all this.

" _You were born Nyareth'Kannos vas Neda… I am Iroa'Kannos vas L'Haal."_

From the instant that Iroa had uttered those few fateful words out of his mouth, I confess that pretty much everything after that came as a blur to me, just white noise. My vision melted into a meaningless swath of color, a ringing sound began encroaching upon my ears, and my brain felt all jumbled as it desperately tried to make sense of what just happened. Even my tongue could not properly formulate words to question the existence of this moment as it fumbled around in my mouth, resulting in me having to stay silent lest I babble meaningless gibberish in utter shock.

But… how? How did this come to be? How was Iroa, Nya's father, alive? Nya told me that he had died before she had even been born – an accident in a laboratory, some kind of explosion. His illegal research, discovered posthumously, had been the entire catalyst for why Nya held the stigma of being the child of an exile on the flotilla, thus sentencing her to a lifetime of ridicule aboard the fleet for her father's mistake.

So if he did not die, where had he been all this time? Answers needed to be sought, and quickly.

Observantly, Iroa had quickly and politely ushered us in on board his ship, presumably so that we could all have a chance to sit down and process this information in a more private environment. I was mobile enough that I had to kind of guide Nya where we were going by gently pushing on her shoulders. She was simply too stunned to think about anything else.

The layout of the shuttle was rather simple – the ramp from outside led into a dual-story transport with hallways stark, without an identity. The first room on the right served as the place where we were currently housed, a simple meeting room that possessed a long table and a multitude of chairs. Nothing fancy, merely serviceable, as is the _modus operandi_ for the majority of quarian vessels.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in one of these chairs, which were rather stiff as a matter of fact, to the point that I had to keep alternating where I put my weight because no matter how hard I tried, I could not find a suitable position that was comfortable for me to sit in. When all of us had lowered ourselves into the provided chairs, I made sure that Nya was positioned close by me and I clenched her hand in mine, to add a little extra mental stability. Someone needed to be the anchor this time around, so it might as well be me.

All this time, Nya's chest was rising in and out quickly – sharp, little breaths. Her eyes looked blankly forward: a thousand-yard stare. Worried, I rubbed at her shoulders and scooted in a bit more so that I could hug her close.

"Easy," I whispered in her ear. "Relax, it's going to be fine."

Immediately, I felt Nya's muscles loosen in response to my voice. The power of words at work. The corners of my lips briefly tilted upwards in pride.

That's my girl. My strong, fearless girl.

As I was doing that, Rie and Chandler's looks constantly grew from quizzical to borderline bewilderment as they swiveled their heads in all directions, trying to take everything in. Who could blame them? After all, getting into the middle of a family issue was probably the last thing that any one of us would have expected to encounter on our vacation – all the way on _Rannoch_ , no less. Rather selfishly, a part of me was angry at Iroa for having disrupted what was to be a nice getaway for a week, but another part of me was similarly awed, with the knowledge that Nya's supposedly long-dead father was sitting across the table from us, not to mention the fact that we had met the man before and had not realized who he was earlier.

The room that we were crammed into was in dire need of some polish, to say the least. The architecture itself was sturdy, built to last, but there was nothing in the way of comfort that eased its appearance upon the eyes. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all metal, but the ship itself was so ancient that the metal had taken upon this diseased, coppery brown color that reflected the light from the overhead fixtures yellow. Much like the chairs, the desk in the middle of the room was unremarkable, coated with various datapads as well as a thick layer of dust. Either Iroa had not a care in the world for workstation appearances, or if the stereotypes of movies were to be believed, it was a sign of an individual burdened by a goal.

The door had slid shut about a minute ago, trapping the five of us into this enclosed box together, but no one had spoken a word out loud yet. It was like each side was waiting for the other to make the first move, ask the first question, that no one apparently had any idea of how to open a conversation in a situation such as this. You try to think of something to say after a complete stranger walks up to you and says, "Hey! I'm your dad!" and see if can be somewhat meaningful.

Yeah. Didn't think so.

Finally not content to let the silence drag out any longer, Iroa awkwardly cleared his throat and leaned forward from his chair in anticipation. It was almost like he had a speech ready for this moment but, at the last possible second, had forgotten all his lines entirely from nerves.

If Iroa was nervous, I wonder how he thought we were feeling.

"So…" he began haltingly. "Where would you like me to start, Nya?"

No answer. Just a still gaze from watery eyes was all my wife gave him. Too dumbstruck to utter a single syllable.

I considered speaking up on her behalf, to be her voice after it had vanished from her. Obviously it would seem inconsiderate of me to barge in like that, especially when she had been directly addressed, so I kept silent for now. Not content with letting the awkwardness from the silence build once more, I tightened my grip upon Nya's shoulders to remind her that I was still there, next to her, waiting to catch her with open arms.

"I…" Iroa attempted to say without his voice cracking, "I suppose you'd like to know… where I've been all this time. I know that this is all… unbelievable to you, Nya, but once you hear why I haven't seen you until now, you'll understand right away that-,"

"Twenty-eight years," Nya croaked out, her eyes never wavering from Iroa.

"W-What?" Iroa stammered, caught off-guard.

"Twenty-eight years have elapsed… and all that time I had been _lied_ to? Why… how _could_ you?"

Iroa spread his hands, helpless. "I'm sorry, daughter. I… I don't understand…"

" _DON'T!_ " Nya suddenly shrieked as she stood up and knocked over her chair with a clang. Iroa recoiled back fearfully and I gaped at Nya, mouth open in astonishment. She pointed an accusatory finger at her father. "What gives you the right to call me that?! For _twenty-eight_ years you have not inhabited a single second of my life and all of a sudden you pick _now_ to show up?! How can you… what is wrong with…"

Iroa similarly stood, his arm outstretched – a gesture to listen. His body was very still, the scarf encircling his neck barely moving.

"Nyareth…" he spoke softly, "you have no idea how long I've been imagining this moment. For years upon years, I've been agonizing to meet you, to call you 'daughter' as is my natural right as your father. You have to believe me when I say that I never wanted to cause you pain like this-,"

Nya recoiled back from the man's arms. "Your 'natural right?'" she repeated. "You never wanted to cause me pain?! How _dare_ you! How dare you for thinking that you being here would not dredge up a lifetime's worth of pain?! This is impossible. You're dead! Mother – your _wife_ – said you were dead! All those years… she lied to me?"

"No, Nyareth, your mother never lied to you. She told you the truth, or what she believed to be the truth. What really happened was… far more complicated."

If Iroa's intention was for this to be one big happy reunion, it certainly was backfiring because Nya looked to be two steps away from launching herself onto him and throttling him.

"You… _bastard_ ," Nya spat, eyes brimming with fire. "I hope you realize that my entire childhood was ruined because of you. There was no end to the torment that was placed onto me just for being the spawn of the flotilla's biggest idiot who got himself killed for a useless cause. Opportunities denied, harsh words stabbing at me like knives – it was all constant… and apparently you never died in the first place. With that in mind, you _still_ tried to get in touch with me? Did you really think I'd have a better reaction than this? You'd better have a good explanation as to where you were all this time, while your daughter repeatedly bore the brunt of your shame."

While she had nearly been screaming at him, Iroa had slowly sunk down into his chair, hand at his chest as if he was going through heart palpitations. Understandable, considering that he was a hair's breadth away from getting disowned by his own child. All I could do was sit and watch, occasionally massaging my throat in preparation of another coughing attack.

Iroa gave a tired sigh. "The truth will not make things better, Nya. It will only make you angrier."

"I'd rather have the truth than more lies. I don't care how angry I get."

The elder quarian gulped, fearful of the wrath that his daughter was keeping back, ready to spill over at a moment's notice.

"Then the truth was… I never left the flotilla. All this time, since your mother's exile and your return to the fleet, I've been on the flotilla the entire time."

If I somehow had the ability to peer into both my wife's and Iroa's visors, I would have spotted astonishingly similar expressions. Nya was shaking in place as she stood, near tears as her simmering rage seared her, paining her from feeling so angry towards another person. Iroa also seemed to be near tears, deathly afraid of his daughter as each word out of his mouth only served to anguish her and not soothe her.

"This isn't happening," Nya muttered to herself after giving a laugh of disbelief. She then sunk back down into her chair, upright once again. "I cannot believe that this is happening. So close by… the entire time? Unbelievable…"

During the ordeal, Rie and Chandler had shoved themselves back into the corner, wisely shutting up and staying well away from this. I, meanwhile, took the reins of the conversation as my expression darkened toward Iroa as I put a gentle arm around Nya, now that she was too angry to even speak. Her enviro-suit prevented my physical contact from making the largest impact possible upon her, but I'd like to think that the barest pressure from her husband's touch had to count for something.

"Iroa," I sighed, "she does have a point."

"Sam, please, I'm begging you. If you could understand my point of view-,"

"Understand?" I repeated, my face scrunching up in surprise. "Absolutely not. I mean… do you even know how this looks, even for me? Let's be completely honest, I've known Nya longer than you have, and I'm having a hard time trying to rationalize how someone – _anyone_ – could react to something like this. Hell, from where I'm sitting, I'm in total agreement with Nya."

"I swear to you, I know that this looks bad on my part. It's something that I knew was going to be unavoidable… but I couldn't keep waiting. I had to see Nya, even after-,"

"Twenty-eight years?" I finished tonelessly. "Iroa, I can understand the need to be with family – I'm not that dense – but to be separated from your daughter for twenty-eight years is an absurdly long amount of time that simply stretches plausibility too far. All that time – and like you said, you've been on the flotilla – and you're visiting now? How can you justify this to me? Let alone your own _daughter?_ "

My windpipe had been clenching further and further the more we resided here, and it was not due to my injuries. I was keenly aware of the blood thundering up the arteries into my head, causing my entire face to pulsate. My skin felt itchy and a twitch was starting to develop in the corner of my eye as a result of me being so tense. A pit of wariness was beginning to boil in my gut, prickling my skin and keeping my nerves precariously balanced on a razor's edge.

Very rarely have I had such a strong sensation of unease. I was extremely cautious, wary of this intruder into our life. This entire revelation, but with no explanations to accompany it so far. I could not help feeling mistrustful. What were the intentions of this man revealing himself to Nya as her father? What did he hope to gain?

Iroa seemed to realize that he was losing his audience and made a conceding gesture with his hands. His limbs were quaking from fright so badly that I almost sympathized with the man.

"I… admit, I do know that length of time I've been estranged from Nyareth is quite unreasonable. But it's not like I wanted it to be this way. I've _always_ held the desire to see my complete family before me, but it was never truly possible until now. You _must_ believe me. I know I don't have the right to ask for your forgiveness, Nyareth, but all I ask is that you just listen to what I have to say and you can decide for yourself then if you can really forgive me."

I almost added that Iroa should be seeking forgiveness from the both of us, not just Nya. After all, am I not a part of this family? To avoid annoying the man, though, I kept my trap shut (although the grinding of my teeth indicated that I so dearly wanted to speak up) and waited for the quarian to explain himself.

It would have to be a damn good explanation, though.

As Nya leaned forward, wracked with determination, her voice was laced with steel, sharp and unyielding.

"Forgive you? You must expect the impossible with such a request. You might as well ask me to stop the sun from setting because there is little you can do to accomplish such a thing."

"That's not true, Nyareth. I can't believe that you would judge me that harshly so quickly. I have to trust that you will find it in yourself to accept me. It's what your mother would have wanted."

"My… my mother?" Nya's voice dripped with derision. "You can't even say her name! The way she spoke of you, it was like you were some kind of prodigy, the sweetest man she had ever known. Yet here you are, still alive with the knowledge that she died believing the lie of your death, tasked with carrying _your_ shame while your hands conveniently failed to pick up any dirt."

Iroa remained frozen in place, his eyes performing all the talking. Sadness, pain, and remorse all were reflected in the same eyes that he and Nya shared. He did not speak because he knew that Nya was telling the truth, he was smart enough not to deny it. It then occurred to me that, unlike most of the quarians that I had met (barring Nya), Iroa was harboring a high intelligence and capacity for empathy. Makes sense, considering Nya had the same, but with Iroa, he seemed very capable at listening to rational thought and reacting to ideas in a quite normal matter.

Every fiber of my brain warned me not to trust him and not to underestimate him.

"That is the worst punishment I will ever have to endure," Iroa whispered through dry lips. "To live with the fact that I never will be able to explain myself to Qirra – your mother. I will never have a chance to speak to her again… but you, Nya, I still have time."

I did not have to glance at Nya for affirmation to know that Iroa was telling the truth. My chest clenched up a little tighter at that. Even though I had never known the name of Nya's mother, the fact that she was not protesting meant that Iroa's position had strengthened ever so slightly.

But it was enough to keep him from toppling off the edge.

"Nya," Iroa now leaned forward, almost begging. "I loved your mother very much. Ever since I met her, everything I did was for the family that I knew we'd create together. She was my entire life and I in no way intended for all of this to happen to the two of you – the exiling, the torments."

"Then… then _what_ happened?"

"Perhaps it's better if I start at the beginning. Before you were born, I was a well-renowned researcher among the fleet. A technician, assigned to investigate the properties of creating a shared virtual consciousness without managing to manifest such a thing into a true artificial intelligence. I daresay I was one of the best in my field, if I'm being truly honest. There weren't many who could do my job. The project itself fell under Admiral Xen's domain, a fact that I despised. She was a very unforgiving supervisor and frequently gave her team impossible goals purely to further her own ends. I had the good fortune to become involved in my project and for Xen to realize the potential in what I was creating, giving me the freedom to proceed at my own pace and set my own timetables. It was hard work, but liberating, and I enjoyed the trust that Xen bestowed upon me."

"Was your project legal back then, or was it your idea to flirt with the concept of creating your own AI?" I asked, my arms crossed. "Nya told me part of the story. You ended up trying to recreate a new intelligence as an alternative to the geth, if I recall correctly."

The man leveled a shaking finger at me. "You cannot possibly begin to understand how dangerous it was for quarians back then. Three decades ago we had no hope of ever taking back our homeworld in the near future – and certainly no solution in place that would be widely accepted, let alone approved. The Council was not going to budge from their lack of support for the quarians and everyone knew that we were vastly outnumbered against the geth, if we were to confront them directly. I took it upon myself to adapt my consciousness project into an artificial intelligence, yes, but I made sure to implement several software safeguards to ensure that no quarians would end up being hurt in the process. It was my decision, I had full authority from Xen to utilize all available means at my disposal towards giving our people the upper hand, no matter the cost. My project would have saved lives in the end, had it not been cut short unexpectedly."

Now it was Nya's turn to speak. "But… but there was an explosion. The experiment failed and… and you _died_. There were no survivors in the laboratory – everyone's suits were breached. How did you survive? Was there even an explosion?"

"There was an explosion on the lab ship, yes, but I was safe. I was not even on the same ship when it had occurred, actually. My death was the lie that Xen chose to disseminate to the flotilla, a lie that no one chose to question, as she predicted. All my staff were killed with minimal parts to… recover. I suppose everyone assumed that I had been blasted to bits along with my coworkers."

"Was the entire thing… your doing?"

Iroa seemed offended at the question. "Nya, I would have _never_ killed the people whom I worked alongside for years. I could never have done such a thing. No, the one who was responsible for the explosion and my absence for almost thirty years… was Xen."

"But what happened? Why would she do that?" The well of questions from Nya seemed endless – exact copies of what I had in mind as well.

The lone quarian on the table's far side just took the hurled inquiries in stride, also eager to share his dark slice of history.

"Even while operating in the most secure lab in the fleet, one can never keep secrets from Xen – the woman has eyes everywhere. She must have found out about the details of my little project months before the incident, but chose not to report me because I was still furthering her interests at the time. Xen is many things, but she isn't stupid enough to throw out years' worth of AI research especially when progress is being made under her own roof. And if it succeeded, the ethical concerns would have been discarded – we would have been judged as saviors rather than traitors. Of course AI research was made illegal under Council law despite the fact that we were not a Council race, but there were many among the Admiralty Board who would rather be compliant with the Council's sanctions rather than tell them to shove off. In my eyes, what I was doing was well within my given job to perform: securing a means to take back our homeworld with no restrictions interfering with the goal! The downside of that was that there were a few people who did not share my sentiment. One of my researchers, a young woman, had a crisis of faith, so I was told. She had misgivings about the entire project and had intended to inform the Admiralty Board about our research. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Xen had gotten wind of the woman's plan long before I or anyone else on the team could develop suspicions."

"How?" Nya pressed. "What, was Xen hacking your consoles? Is that how she found out?"

"Xen's _always_ hacking our consoles. The admiral is so paranoid that I strongly suspect that she keeps an entire arsenal underneath her bunk. I considered it normal with her, everyone knew of our relative lack of privacy. Which is why it came as a surprise when I had been shown a draft message left by the researcher detailing her intent to blow everything wide open about our little project. It was a good thing that it had not been sent, otherwise I shudder to imagine what would have occurred."

"Which would have meant your exile, I suppose?" I asked.

"Worse," Iroa shook his head. "The threads tying us and the project to Xen were so blatant that she would have been caught in the crossfire had the scandal been exposed. Xen would have been exiled, most likely, but not before she would have executed me for failing to contain the leak. Xen knew that she had to keep this under wraps, but not without sacrificing all the progress made under her supervision. Without my knowledge, she hatched a plan to remove herself from the equation and to provide a bit of insurance for the long-term at the same time. Her plan saved me, yet it also doomed me."

"The explosion," Nya stated.

"Correct. The day of the accident, Xen made sure to intercept and detain me before I left to go to the research ship where I had been working for the past few years. She was a step ahead of everyone, well ahead of me. I was forced to watch as Xen detonated the ship from afar, incinerating all the people on my team, including the whistleblower and her expose. She then made sure to plant enough evidence in the wreckage to tie me to explosion, implicating me in the process. Her way of revenge, most likely, for not maintaining control of my staff. After all, catastrophic accidents on ships don't just randomly occur – any lack of evidence would have only given rise to more suspicion. I have to admit that what Xen pulled off was a masterstroke: she made me the scapegoat for the explosion, introduced enough evidence to suggest that I was working on illegal technologies, and simultaneously spearheaded the efforts to bring closure to all the families affected."

Iroa was getting angrier and angrier as he spoke, but this rage was directly inwardly, not outwardly. It was like he had finally been released after having to speak with a filter over his mouth for so long that he was physically undergoing side effects from finally revealing secrets that had long been bottled up.

The man eyed us carefully in case we had any questions before he continued.

"Since Xen's machinations effectively caused me to be dead in everyone's eyes, there was little I could do in protest. The thought of Qirra imagining me gone from her life tore me apart, but I could not return to her. I was officially KIA and Xen would kill me should anyone had ever found out that I was secretly alive as my existence was the one secret that had the potential to bring Xen down for good. But who would ever look for a dead man? This effectively made me Xen's prisoner for the past twenty-eight years, as I was forced to work on whatever research she deemed important at the time in a lab well hidden away from everyone. In the end, Xen's lie about the explosion was the perfect excuse Xen needed to give all the reasons she needed to keep me under her employ and to prevent her duties from falling under scrutiny."

I let loose a laugh of disbelief. "And the admirals took their frustrations out on your wife, right? Like you said, no one would look for a dead man."

The man suddenly slammed his fists down on the table so hard that they shook the foundations bolts on the ground, causing everyone to jump.

"I had no control over what they did to Qirra!" Iroa seethed. "And Xen only encouraged it all! The biggest mistake that I had made, it turned out, was that I kept no secrets from my wife regarding my work. She had been in the loop the whole way, but she would never turn me in – she trusted that I was doing the right thing. So when the time came to pass judgment, it only took the admirals fifteen minutes to declare my wife guilty and to exile her. Xen made sure to tell me the news afterward, probably to see my reaction as she gloated."

"Let me guess, she didn't even tell you that your wife was pregnant with Nya until much later, right?"

"The bitch made sure to mention it two years later… well after she had been born," Iroa growled. "I must have cried for days. To know that I was essentially trapped by a psychopath while my wife was barely staying alive on some moon along with my child – whom I'd never seen – was unbearable. After word got to me that Qirra had died from a suit breach on that moon, I tried to commit suicide a couple times. I don't know how I managed not to kill myself in that time period, but by the Ancestors, I tried my best. Not that any of you know how that feels, but I sincerely hope that none of you should find yourself thinking that there is no way out except your death."

It goes to show that Iroa, for all his insight, did not know me as well as he thought he did. Perhaps on the outside I appeared to be a normal human, free of the demons that besieged someone with a heavy mind. He had no idea how broken I had once been, the lengths that I had gone to in order to end my existence. I think I still had some burn marks on my back from my imaginative yet utterly ludicrous final attempt.

In no way did I ever want to find myself in that position again, that much was certain.

I kept silent for now, wary at showing my hand too early. That was Iroa's mistake – he was assuming that everything he was saying about me was correct when he was only half-right. There was a natural arrogance hidden beneath his contrite veneer. His kindly exterior was peeling away bit by bit as he continued to talk.

What did this man really want?

"But why show yourself now?" Nya asked. "Why did now have to be the time for this?"

"Because now was the only opportunity I've ever been afforded after nearly three decades. Xen can't keep tabs on all her subordinates when she's off running a civil war. She's too much of a control freak to simply sit idly by and watch – she likes to be on the front lines. But when you're concentrating so much at what's in front of you, things in the back tend to slip on by. I've been operating on my own for a few weeks now with me and a small contingent of marines – the men you just saw before you boarded. I doubt Xen would care too much to go after me as the latest reports have her currently losing the war, which means that she does not have the resources to track down a lone individual such as myself."

"So you would use this time to reconnect with your daughter after you've been let loose?" I questioned. "There certainly had to be a less confrontational way to go about accomplishing this."

"And I had mentioned to you before that I had already attempted to do so," Iroa now sounded exasperated. "Why do you think I was at the Citadel the first time we met? It certainly was not part of a routine medical examination – I was supposed to have revealed myself then and there to her. But then I saw that she was distraught about the recent injuries you had accumulated and the timing didn't seem right. I felt that it would be too much to reveal to Nyareth the existence of her father as she was helping a friend recover."

"I bet the timing could have worked itself out," I mused.

"How could I know that? The last thing I ever intended was to make my daughter agitated but at the same time I did not want her to continue to go on knowing nothing about her father. Besides, am I not entitled to this after suffering for so long? Is it not my right to reach out to family?"

"'Entitled?'" I uttered with a laugh. "You're making it sound like this whole thing is just a reward to you. Something to make up for your years of dutiful service, am I right?"

Silver eyes narrowed into slits. Careful, now. I was playing with fire and liable to get burned if I said the wrong thing. Iroa also seemed to be in an internal debate as he carefully chose his next words.

"You mock me, but my only intention is to make my family whole again after it was ripped asunder by an insane _bosh'tet_. Surely you are not so arrogant as to assume that I don't deserve a 'reward' such as that, Sam? Or perhaps you are simply unkind for thinking so. In any case, I've been mending my family slowly over the years, and I only need Nya to finally make all my turmoil worth it in the end – make everything complete once more."

The insinuation in Iroa's words was not lost on me and Nya, and we glanced at each other in confusion briefly, wondering if we had heard the right thing.

"Um, 'over the years?'" Nya asked, trepidation creeping into her voice. "Fath-… _Iroa_ , what do you mean that you've been mending your family over the years if I'm the only member left in relation to you?"

Iroa bristled slightly and he slowly tapped his fingers on the cluttered table. With a sigh, he gave a tug at the golden scarf encircling his neck, loosening it from its noose-like grip.

"I suppose it's better that you find out sooner rather than later," he murmured before he raised his wrist and spoke five words into his omni-tool. "You may come in now."

What the hell? My fingers slightly twitched towards the pistol holstered within my jacket before I had to remind myself to be calm. Nothing ever got solved by shooting things on sight.

If I had only known at the time.

The door hissed as the locks cycled, allowing the barrier to part effortlessly. In walked two more quarians: one female and one male. The female's suit was colored all black, a shadow upon the room. Her very silhouette was inky against the dark walls, making it hard to tell where her outline began or ended. Her visor, conversely, was nearly white, rendering it difficult to perceive the silver eyes that glowed from within.

Immediately, this woman gave me a chill – the kind that manages to radiate into your extremities and cause your bones to start shaking.

Compared to his counterpart, the male's suit was more colorful: he had chosen to don himself with fabrics of a brilliant electric blue color that conversely seemed to light up the grungy room. His visor, unlike most quarians, had been tactically configured; instead of tempered glass as his barrier, he had reinforced metal serve as his facial covering - a sign of an individual trained in combat. What little glass his visor possessed was only positioned near his eyes, making a V-shape that cut through the brushed steel and exposed the barest sliver of his glowing corneas. Oddly, the hood that encased his helmet was bigger than a normal male's, much like how female quarians stylized theirs, but it was large and spacious enough that it managed to cloak part of his visor in shadow. His right arm was wreathed in some kind of armor, possibly repurposed from a turian's getup, colored dark gray. He was the most intimidating-looking quarian I had ever seen in my life.

To make him appear even more aggressive, the quarian's suit was not the only thing that stood out about him, though. As he stood next to the female, there was quite an obvious difference in their heights – the man had least half a head more than his companion. He had to be nearing six feet tall, which was about as tall as I was. He was also broader than the average quarian, perhaps only a mere few inches shorter than my current width. While no means approaching football player size, he was still big (as well as fit) enough to present quite the physical challenge to his opponents, should he ever be engaged in fisticuffs.

This was one quarian who I'd seriously consider hedging bets on in a fistfight, let me put it straight.

The new arrivals took their seats on either side of Iroa. Guess now we knew whom the other two chairs had been for. Silently, the two quarians both folded their hands in front of each other, a practiced gesture of politeness, yet it also came across as cold and stiff.

Iroa took a second for us to get used to the new company before he gestured towards his companions.

"Sam, Nya, and friends, please allow me to introduce Kraana and Eyzn, my… my wife and her son."

Before any of us could react (presumably in shock once again), Eyzn gave an honorable dip of his head in greeting, but if I were able to see his eyes clearly through the V-shaped slit, I could have seen the odd glint in them that would have unnerved me to my core.

"It's… an odd feeling," the man said as he tilted his head up toward the light. He sounded younger than me, but not too young. His voice was light and breathy, very pleasant but there was a slightly darker edge to it than I was expecting. "To see your stepsister in the flesh for the first time. All grown up, too. Quite interesting. I've imagined this moment so many times, but the reality feels… familiar, almost. Knowing that my sibling is finally across from me… it's such a liberating sensation."

Nya nearly vomited.

* * *

I suppose I should interject here to give an explanation of just how completely dumbfounded we all were by what had just happened not even a minute ago. Make no mistake, if the father revelation was one thing, then this was the cherry on top of what was turning out to be a twist-filled day because, to be honest, quarian remarriages are practically unheard of no matter what circles you belong to.

For quarians, their concept of marriage is remarkably similar to the traditions humans hold, in that two people (regardless of race or gender, etc.) pledge themselves to each other in a legal union – officially denoting their monogamous relationship together while establishing their shared obligations and rights as a couple. Familiar stuff, right? There are, however, subtle differences between our two races that have to be taken into account beforehand.

Let's put the emphasis on monogamous for a bit. That is not to say that the majority of humans engage in polyamorous displays of affection, but it is quite common for a human to have had multiple sexual partners in their lifetime. This is not so easy for a quarian to achieve due to their weak immune systems. With each partner, a quarian exposes themselves to a variety of new and different contaminants, requiring their bodies to adapt (a long and gradual process) before the risk of a fatal reaction can be considered minimal. Yes, a quarian _can_ physically take on multiple partners, but doing so is considered to be needlessly risking themselves to a stray infection or reaction from substances in the air or whatever they happen to consume. Therefore, the mentality of a quarian is that they naturally aspire to only ever have one sexual partner to minimize the risk they inherit, lest they… well, die.

This line of thinking means that all quarians generally take their relationships quite seriously – even more so when the relationships became sexual. In this day and age, if a quarian exposes their immune system in the presence of a new partner, they would have to take massive precautions in order for the quarian to still be alive after everything was said and done. Once their bodies had adapted to their partner's natural germs, the precautions could be lessened, but taking one's suit off for different partners was considered just pure recklessness to the majority of quarians. The odds of perishing from doing so spike exponentially with each new partner that the quarian introduces to their system. It's a risk that few are willing to take.

This has the side effect of the quarians developing a strong mental bond with their partners, bonds that are unimaginable for the human mind to conceive. To a quarian who has entered into a sexual relationship, they create this connection that far transcends the boundaries of friendship or emotion – their complete and total trust and devotion is placed onto their partner in a powerful act of attachment and adoration, creating a mindset of a pure and unconditional love that would cause a metaphysical reaction in the quarian should those bonds be tested. It really is a beautiful and moving concept, but it also is prone to side effects.

As should be the case for Iroa, now that we've tied everything all back. When Iroa lost his first wife, he should have been stricken with a terrible grief that he had no choice but to bear alone, considering the circumstances and the nature of his relationship. If he loved his wife so much, it should have been much harder for him to find another, both emotionally and physically. One could argue that a lot could change in a person given three decades, but even so, it would still be unusual for a quarian to remarry, to reforge bonds long broken and to ignore all the potential health risks.

That being said, all this knowledge was already known to me, so I had some semblance as to just how uncommon this was for quarians – and it was rightly baffling to my meager mind.

Nya, on the other hand, was trying not to pass out as all of her preconceptions regarding her race and family were being completely overturned before her eyes.

* * *

"How could you?" were her first words to Iroa.

That really seemed to hurt, judging by the crestfallen look his eyes betrayed.

"Nyareth, I realize this looks strange, but I assure you-,"

"No… no!" Nya was so on edge that she nearly leapt from her seat again. Concerned, I got up before she could and moved behind her chair as I placed my hands on her shoulders to be her protective wall and supporting foundation. "Have you no empathy? Not only were you never present at all during my life, you had managed to replace my mother?!" she cried. "How else _could_ this look for me?!"

"Do you think I didn't know how this could appear to you?" Iroa roared. "You had only ever known one mother your entire life, but things change over time. This was something you had to know eventually."

"Nyareth," Kraana finally spoke. Her voice was low and husky, the equivalent of thick velvet. "Please. I was not trying to replace your mother when I-,"

"Oh, really?" Nya shot back with so much sarcasm that I was simply amazed at the sheer venom in her words. "That's rich, because you replacing my mother was exactly what happened when you married my father! How the _hell_ did you two get together, anyway?"

Kraana looked torn at Nya's seething tone. "Iroa was not the only person Xen had locked away, you know. We were forced to work together along with everyone else that Xen had imprisoned over the years. The two of us met and… found some kind of connection, I guess."

"So how long did it take for you to entice Iroa to join you in your bed? How long was it before he forgot his first wife entirely?"

The older woman smoldered and glanced to the side, embarrassed. "That was uncalled for," she whispered.

Iroa stood up angrily. "Nyareth!" he growled. "I realize that you're upset, but that does not give you the right to talk to Kraana that way. She is my wife!"

"But she is not my mother!" Nya yelled as she similarly sprung to her feet. "A fact that you have appeared to have forgotten!"

"Yet you will respect her all the same!"

" _I will not!_ "

" _Nyareth!_ "

"ENOUGH!" I bellowed, shaking the entire room before the absence of sound created a vacuum in my ears, everyone similarly startled by my outburst. Almost immediately after the word finally died in my throat, a tiny cough followed it along with a tiny bead of blood that splattered against the back of my hand.

I could feel all eyes in the room boring into me as I stood there with blood on my hand. I heard Nya take a slight gasp as she realized that my throat had been reopened slightly. Taking it in stride, I withdrew my inhaler from my pocket and took a quick breath from it, gritting my teeth against the ever-present stings while I fought to control my temper, something that apparently everyone in this room was trying to accomplish as well.

Nya's body was wound tightly like a drum, nearly about to leap onto the nearest person unfortunate enough to be placed in her crosshairs. Iroa, livid, was practically steaming as the framework for his big moment was crumbling all around him. Kraana only sunk deeper and deeper into a quiet rage, resentful at the way Nya had been treating her, but mistakenly assuming that her acceptance would be automatic. Either Kraana was naïve for assuming that Nya would let her in immediately, or just stupid.

Eyzn was the only unknown, though. He had been sitting idly by the entire time, his eyes scanning the players, analyzing their tics. He was the only person that truly made me uneasy in this room.

I had to regain control of this conversation. Fast. Damned if it wasn't my place to butt in – it certainly was now!

"This is serving no end," I said after wiping my mouth. "If everyone's just going to yell at one another then nothing's going to get accomplished today. I know that-,"

"Yes, agreed," Iroa interrupted with a hand. "Everything kind of ran away from me there. Look, Sam, I appreciate what you're doing but-,"

Now Eyzn made sure to wrest everyone's attention away. "Wait," he spoke in his soft voice. "I would like to hear what the human was about to say."

"Eyzn, now is not the time-,"

"Just wait. Sam?"

Perplexed yet grateful at the intervention on my behalf, I granted Eyzn a polite nod.

"Um… thank you. But like I was saying, Iroa, I know you mean well with all of this and it is very important to you, but I'm not going to sit here and let you yell at Nya any longer."

"I only want her to give my family the respect they deserve…"

"Then you're an idiot for springing all this onto her!" I raised my voice while my hands similarly tightened around Nya's shoulders. I could feel a vein start to pulsate in my forehead, angered by the sheer stupidity displayed by the people on the other side of the table. "She's had to live with this preconceived notion of her family for her entire life and in less than an hour, everything she's come to realize that those memories of her past were nothing but lies! Pardon my language, but this seems like a completely natural fucking reaction, to be honest."

Eyzn rose to his feet slowly and proceeded to walk around the table, but not before I slung a finger in his direction.

"You stay right where you are," I growled menacingly. "Don't think that I'm going to trust you right off the bat."

The younger quarian shrugged, partly in admiration. "And you'd be right not to trust me. I'm merely… curious. You seem to have a fair amount of knowledge regarding Nya and her – _our_ – family. Why is that? I wonder… how much do you really know about her?"

"More than you, pal," I retorted, but that only induced the opposite reaction than I had been expected in Eyzn.

"Hah! The spine! Yes! The bravado! You're more interesting than most, Sam. I daresay that learning about you could prove to be even more rewarding."

I narrowed my eyes in caution. Where the hell was this coming from? "You'd better get in line. My shrink's got me booked solid for the next year."

Iroa slammed a fist on the table in exasperation. "This dialogue is entirely pointless. Look, Sam, I had intended this to be a private affair between me and my daughter, and I'm afraid that you're merely complicating things, despite how much the two of you are friends. I implore you, as a father, to please just… let me have some time alone with Nya so that we can take all the time we need to level things out as adults. If you have any sense of decency, just let us work this out as a family."

Even though I understood the words that Iroa spoke to me, the full meaning took many seconds to completely register. What else could I feel at this time except sheer disbelief at the complete blindness demonstrated by this man?

 _He doesn't know… he has no idea…_

When I finally collected the entirety of my wits, my only reaction was to elicit a high-pitched wheeze before culminating into a series of full-bodied laughs that sucked out all the breath from my lungs and caused my throat to ache. The lunatic howling in laughter (me) was probably drawing many concerned looks from the three quarians, but their confusion was only fueling my fire.

I wiped tears from my eyes as I continued to occasionally choke up a guffaw. "That… that's not going to happen."

"I fail to see what's so amusing," Iroa scowled. "I did not wish to be rude, but you have left me no choice. Leave this room at once or I may have to indulge other methods in order to make you leave. I repeat, this is between _family_ and that does not include _you_."

The obvious threat was not lost on me, but the man's stubbornness was only continuing to grate upon my psyche the more he opened his mouth. There was the barest part of me that was enjoying this, that feeling of satisfaction knowing you have an ace up your sleeve. The best part was, Iroa genuinely had no clue. Had we not been that obvious before?

Maybe I could afford to be a bit greedy. It was time to push this man's buttons in a way they had never been pushed before.

"No," was my simple reply.

Nya sucked in her breath in anticipation.

Kraana raised her head in alarm.

Eyzn froze himself completely stiff.

Iroa did a double-take, like he was unsure of what he had just heard.

"I'm sorry… 'no?'"

"Correct. My answer is no. I'm not leaving."

The man surged his arm towards the door, body shaking with rage like never before. "Get out of this room, human. Leave us alone so Nyareth can be able to talk to the only people who matter to her the most in privacy!"

That bastard just crossed the line with that unfortunate comment. Nya flinched in my arms, also affected like I was, but I wanted to be the one to verbally tear this man apart. No longer did I have any sympathy towards Iroa anymore. I wanted to see his reaction as all of _his_ conceptions would be rearranged in front of his eyes.

Fair's fair, after all.

"Oh, _fuck you!_ " I blurted out, uncaring at how the vulgar comment lowered me in Iroa's eyes. Not like I had much distance before I reached rock bottom. "A deadbeat father for three decades somehow manages to be a person that Nya is supposed to care about the most?! You deluded asshole. Nya is right – what the fuck is _wrong_ with you?! You're making all of these assumptions based on what you expect your daughter to be like, not what she's grown up to be: her own woman, strong, confident, and the person I admire the most! We matter to each other more than you ever have to her because of the time we've spent together, not from such flimsy ties like blood!"

Iroa practically exploded while Eyzn silently sidled over behind his stepfather. "How _dare_ you?! Are you so willfully ignorant or inflexible that you would not allow a civil conversation to be conducted within this family – which, I might continue to point out, you are not a part of?"

"I hate to break it to you, but we _have_ been conducting this discussion within the family the entire time we've been in this room, and you're the one who ceased to be civil in the first place… _dad_."

I spat the final word with the sort of mocking tone that could cause paint to peel for it was so laced with anger and indignation. Nya laced her fingers with mine as she stepped to be at my side, now offering me the silent protection that I had afforded her earlier.

Iroa looked hopelessly lost as his eyes blanked. "I… don't… what is the meaning of this?"

Rolling my eyes, I was amazed at how perceptive this man could be, yet so clueless at the same time.

"What else could it mean? You're not the only family she has, you know."

To drive that point home, I lifted my hand, the one with the titanium ring upon my finger. There was no way that Iroa could miss the glint from the brushed metal adornment, nor how tightly Nya and I were holding each other's hands. Finally, everything seemed to click for him as understanding washed over him like a wave.

"That cannot be."

"It most certainly is!" Nya now defended as she tightly clutched at my arm. "He's the best man I've ever known. How could I not want to be with him?"

"You…" Iroa stammered, "…you bonded to a human? Now everything all makes sense – why the two of you have been so attached. But… what about _your_ people, Nyareth? There was not a suitable mate among them?"

"Are you living in the last century?" Nya boiled with her sharp tongue. "I didn't recall that finding a partner had to be all in-house as a requirement. Besides, you didn't stop to think what effect the label of being a child of an exile would be like? Sam was one of the first people I've met who didn't care about that stupid stigma and he did nothing but show me affection. If only you knew what the Kannos name brought me among _our_ people – nothing but ridicule and shame. If it matters to you, I was _delighted_ the day I finally got to renounce it in exchange for my husband's."

Iroa, nearing his breaking point, slowly sank back down into his chair, his hands shaking with horror and confusion. "You took his _name?_ " he nearly cried out, his voice filled with pain. "Abandoning the name of your ancestors… for a human's?"

"And I'd do it again, given the chance. I have been Nyareth'McLeod for almost a year now – and I expect to remain so for many more afterward."

I then noticed that Eyzn and Kraana shared a cautious look together. Seeing their eyes was not necessary for me to determine that their linked gaze meant something beyond a simple and affirmative glance.

"This is turning out to be more problematic than expected," Eyzn noted out loud as he slowly started to edge around the table, now placing his eyes firmly upon us. "It appears that Iroa's predictions regarding his proposal were far more optimistic than he was anticipating."

"It is rather unfortunate," Kraana agreed as she started to move around the other side of the table. "This may complicate things regarding the proposal. We may want to take alternate action."

"Both of you shut up!" Nya roared before rounding on her father. "What proposal are they even talking about?!"

"I would like to know as well," I added as I placed my hand on the butt of my pistol. "Get to explaining, pops."

Iroa's bitter gaze resonated on the two of us as he tried to put on a more amicable stance. It wasn't working, obviously, as he was still shaken from the knowledge that his daughter had chosen to lie with someone not of her own species.

"Look, I did not engineer this meeting just so that I could introduce myself to you, Nyareth. My idea was a bit more… magnanimous originally. Make no mistake, I wanted to meet you first and foremost, but I also wanted to extend to you an invitation."

Nya squinted her eyes suspiciously. "An invitation for _what_ , exactly?"

"To come and live with me on Rannoch, of course, and to begin the process of reunifying our family. I can plainly see that it might be more difficult of a decision than I had hoped, but I swear to you I-,"

"No," Nya simply said with the same determination and venom that I had when delivering the same reply.

Iroa looked like his dog had just been shot. "Can… can I ask why?"

My wife just stared incredulously at him before giving a derisive shake of your head. "You are so insensitive and so clueless, Iroa. I thought that you were supposed to be intelligent, at least that was how mother described you. You wanted me to live with you but you would have me give up the life I've lived in the process? Why would I want to leave the home I have now? My job? My friends?" She swept an arm, signifying me, Chandler and Rie. "Is there anything you could possibly have to offer that is more important than throwing the word 'family' about over and over?"

Kraana then stepped forward after Iroa failed to conjure a reply. "Nyareth, I know you see me as an invader, but your father has been thinking about you for years and years. You have no idea how much he was looking forward to this, to see his own daughter again, because he loves you so much."

"Seems to me like he was trying to find a way to replace me," Nya dryly retorted. "After all, he's got a new wife and a son now. Why should I believe him when he says that I'm important to him?"

"If you would just give him a chance-,"

Nya just sourly eyed her father. "He's had his chance for thirty years," she seethed before she glared back at Kraana. "I don't know you, I don't know him. I'm not going to leave the life I've been happily living in exchange for the one you're blindly promising. I'm sticking with my husband, thank you very much. _He_ is my family, _not_ you."

The entire time Nya had been talking, I had been swelling with pride towards her. It was one thing to imagine what place you occupy in your spouse's heart, but to hear it out loud is something else. It was almost as if the two of us were jockeying to protect each other, taking up the slack if we were to falter. I continued to keep my guard up, though; we were still trapped inside a room with three strangers whose purpose in being here was still rather insidious.

"So disappointing," Kraana never skipped a beat, her gaze impassive. "Yet admirable, for choosing to remain with the human you copulate with. There is something to be said for fidelity, but it is ultimately of no consequence."

My adrenaline spiked, but I was still teetering on whether to take flight or not. "What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Come now, you had to have realized what was going to happen next," Kraana's voice was pure silk. "Despite our dislike of the _sainted_ Admiral Xen, we're still Loyalists, and these are Admiralty controlled lands, after all. We're certainly not looking to defect any time soon, but there are members on both sides that would certainly love to see the three of us detained. I'm afraid in order for that not to happen, the four of you will have to remain with us for some time. Who knows? Perhaps during this period you might come around to accept your father in the same way you did with your husband, Nyareth. Perhaps you might even accept me as your mother."

Both Nya and I froze in sheer terror. "You complete _bitch_ ," she uttered as she realized that we had been ensnared.

"Fuck," I growled, enraged, as I shoved aside a couple chairs to make my way around to where Kraana stood, desperate to see shock reflected through that silvery visor. "If you even think that you're going to keep my wife here, I swear to god that I will rip off that mask of yours and-,"

Eyzn suddenly surged in front of me, his metallic visor impassive and blank. An object suddenly found itself wedged against my ribs, something circular. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I glanced down and saw that Eyzn had pressed the barrel of his pistol into my torso, his finger dangerously near the trigger. Hissed gasps erupted from Nya and Rie, while Kraana looked smugly on.

"Watch yourself," Eyzn softly warned me, disdain oozing from his lips. "As much as I sympathize, that's my mother you're threatening."

Looking back up at the helmeted face millimeters away from my own, I made sure to stiffen my body and to move as slowly as possible.

I took a deep breath as I stared intently at Eyzn. "Keep that gun pointed at me and she won't be the only one that I'll be threatening."

The tall quarian laughed sinisterly. "So sure of yourself, Sam. I admire your fortitude."

"Pity I can't say the same."

"You'll come around. I'm sure."

Meanwhile, Iroa desperately glanced back and forth in a panic. "Kraana!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing? You can't hold my daughter hostage!"

"Dear, please," Kraana soothed in her syrupy-sweet voice, "I'm doing this to help you. You wanted your daughter back in your life and now she is going to remain in your life a little while longer. Besides, if we let her go now, who's to say she would report us to the authorities?"

"That doesn't mean that you get to keep her here against her will! I didn't want it to be like this!"

"Too bad, because we're doing it anyway."

"What, I don't get a say in this?" Nya asked as she brought up her pistol, the sights aimed squarely at Kraana's head. Instantly, the entire room seemed to vibrate with anticipation. Iroa meekly tried to diminish his profile, Eyzn's gaze finally tore away from me, and Kraana similarly raised her own weapon, a strange firearm that pulsated with light from blue crystal spines, to point across the table at Nya.

Oh shit, I realized, beginning to panic. There wasn't much one could do with a gun pressed into your gut, but the more I lingered here, the more agitated I became at seeing a weapon pointed at my wife. Even if the person wielding it had no intention of pulling the trigger, it was the utter action of directing the weapon itself that enraged me so. Just for that, I wanted to see that bitch's visor shatter in on itself, to witness her face while blood sluiced from a thousand cuts.

"Everyone…" Iroa raised his arms gently, "let's all try to calm down. Put down the guns so that we can discuss this rationally."

"Somehow I have the feeling that we're past that point," Nya said.

"Agreed," Kraana said, her pistol unwavering. "I knew this would be a waste of time."

"Perhaps if I can interject," a clipped voice spoke suddenly as Chandler rose from his seat. Everyone in the room gave a start – I guess we had all forgotten that he and Rie had been sitting in the corner the entire time. "I know of a way we can all resolve this peacefully."

Eyzn just tilted his head in a curious glance as he looked at his mother for confirmation, for which he found none. "And who the hell are you?"

"Please. My name is Chandler Simons and I am a friend of-,"

"I don't really care who you are," Kraana silenced him abruptly with a minute shake of her pistol. "Piss off, you disrespectful simpleton. If you have nothing productive to add concerning this family, then shut your mouth."

Chandler looked hurt as he bit his lip and glanced downward momentarily. "I was just trying to be polite," he shrugged before the telltale hum of dark energy sang upon our ears and a purple aura enveloped Chandler's hand like a glove.

"What in the name of-," Eyzn began to say as he recognized the signs of biotics in his presence.

Before anyone could react, Chandler's eyes screwed up in concentration and he splayed his fingers out as he suddenly thrust his arm forward in a push. A wall of biotic energy streamed from his fingertips in a rush and quickly slammed against Kraana, sending her flying into the wall, knocking her breath out of her lungs with a _whump!_

Instantly, Eyzn's gun moved away from my ribs. "Son of a bitch," he growled as he began to aim at Chandler, who was standing over the dazed Kraana in a pose of domination.

Before he could do that, I quickly reached for my own pistol and stepped back, the barrel pointed squarely at the side of Eyzn's head. "Drop the gun, asshole," I snarled, sweat beginning to bead on my brow. "I'm not playing around. _Drop it now!_ "

Eyzn muttered a curse at having forgotten to disarm me earlier, but he did not comply despite being put in a disadvantageous position. He did take care so that his gun was no longer pointed at anyone, though. "Oh, Sam," the quarian simply sighed. "That was the stupidest mistake you could have made."

"Really? I'll have you enlighten me in a minute. Put the gun on the floor right now."

The words were barely out of my mouth before the quarian suddenly turned, his free hand grasping my own hand that held my pistol. Instinctively, I too reached out with my empty hand, similarly grabbing Eyzn's gun hand before he could turn on me. The two of us were locked in place, muscles straining as we silently battled to maneuver our guns toward the other, limbs quaking, and sweat dripping.

"Why should I?" Eyzn chuckled as he noted my astonishment. "I don't need to listen to you."

"Sam?!" Nya called out as she now lifted her own weapon, apprehensive as she seemed to struggle with pointing a gun in my general direction. I didn't blame her – if one saw their spouse struggling in a fight with another person, it would be my reaction to aim a gun as well.

Eyzn saw the move and laughed. "No, no, sister!" he hissed as he clumsily sidestepped with me in tow, so that Nya was at a bad angle. Now she had no chance of hitting Eyzn without the strong possibility that I would be hit as well. "It's not going to be that easy for you, I fear."

"Nya, don't!" I warned as I struggled to hold onto the quarian, but his arms stood firm like they had been reinforced with rebar. He was unmovable. "I've… got… this!"

"You _do?_ " Eyzn asked in mock amusement. "Ah, the human bravado at work again! Are all of you so tenacious?"

"Why is it… that most quarians I meet… are complete dicks?" I gritted through clenched teeth.

Our arms were still being punished beyond any reasonable limits as we tried to push each other's gun hands away while simultaneously pushing back on those same arms to jockey our weapons against our opponent's head. It was a clumsy ballet, determined by the faintest and minutest of movements. Each subtle twitch seemed slight but they only served to betray moments of weakness – a failing in a strand of muscle, a tightening of a tendon, a slight friction of bone.

While Eyzn and I grappled, I was in complete disbelief at how evenly matched the two of us were. We were nearly the same size, but Eyzn had to be several kilograms lighter. Then it hit me – the quarian muscular system was several times denser to that of a human's as a result of genetically isolating the traits caused by overexertion as a response to the rapid atrophying of muscles in a poor artificial gravity environment. And his stance, his sheer strength, these weren't normal traits for a quarian.

Eyzn had to have advanced military training.

Suddenly terrified, I was beginning to think that this was a fight that I could not hope to win. And what if I didn't? I could be shot, left to bleed out in front of Nya. Or I could be a prisoner to rot in a cell while being separated from my wife. All sorts of awful scenarios ran through my head at breakneck speed that I forgot to pay attention exactly to the head-butt that Eyzn was seconds away from delivering.

" _GAH!_ " I roared as metal connected with bone hard. Stars exploded around me and everything blurred for several seconds – I felt sick. I staggered backward, but miraculously managed to keep my grip on Eyzn. A warm liquid was now trickling into my eye and I didn't need a doctorate to determine what it was. A blotch of red now stained Eyzn's visor, some of it splotching across the slit of glass he used to see out of.

It then occurred to me, staring back at my own blood smeared on my enemy's face, that I had once again been forced into a situation in which violence was a requisite for survival. To take up the sword or die. This cycle of kill or be killed had ensnared me without warning once more and I had foolishly thought that I had left it all behind years ago. The notion of everything being a game had been lost after several years, but I had held hope that no longer would I have to face the possibility of a premature death again.

Yet I had been proven wrong again.

Succumbing to bitter rage and all horrors hell had to offer, I built up a possible future in my mind. I fantasized a house upon a cliff, Nya at my side while she held a little bundle in her arms. Peaceful and perfect… but not to last. I then forcefully ripped that wonderful thought away from me, leaving behind nothing but a longing despair that quickly blossomed into hatred and greed. I used the indescribable vileness that seeped out from the recesses of my imagination, much like my blood, as my fuel. My tortured muscles ceased to weaken and held as I drew strength from an animal side of me that I had taken care to lock away… ever since London.

I wanted this to end… but it was not going to end peacefully either way.

Growling like a lunatic, I sent back a head-butt of my own as a direct retort against the initial blow. A stupid reaction, really, but the only course of action I had come up with first. I had aimed it perfectly using the front part of my skull just before it curved as the area of impact upon Eyzn's visor. Unfortunately, no matter how hard the blow was, I was still slamming my own bony head against a solid metal surface.

And it hurt like hell.

Yowling in pain as my head pounded angrily for a second time, I nearly fell to my knees. The aftereffects were not nearly as severe as the first head-butt, which meant my previous wooziness had dulled the agony somewhat. Good for me, I guess.

Unharmed entirely from the blow, Eyzn just shook his head. "Really?" he scoffed while he reoriented himself. "That's the best you can do? Really, Sam. Just give up before you get seriously hurt."

With a raspy roar, I shook my limbs in denial. Damn me for underestimating this man. I had been so foolish and now I would pay the price. I was beginning to weaken again – I had used all of my anger for nothing!

But then clarity came to me. Of course! How could I have been so stupid? Eyzn had been so focused on restraining my arms that he had forgotten to focus on my legs – an aspect that I too had failed to notice until now. I knew what I had to do, no matter how many times they told me in schoolyards during recess never to do. I would only get one shot. Nothing for it.

When in doubt, fuck it.

"If you insist," I sneered.

I then kneed Eyzn between the legs as hard as I could.

His reaction was instantaneous. Eyzn screamed and dropped like a rock to his knees. He immediately let go of both my arm and his pistol, which I kicked away. Kraana cried out from where she lay as she saw her son in so much pain. Iroa stood from his chair, eyes wide, aghast.

I staggered back against the wall, away from the writhing Eyzn, who was currently clutching at himself from where I had struck. He was going to be like that for a while, I think I might have displaced his testicles entirely. Probably would have helped the quarians if they had invested in some codpieces, eh? Nevertheless, I was grateful for the reprieve and I examined my bruised wrists before tenderly touching the cut on my forehead, finding that the blood had already started to dry.

Adrenaline had saturated my system so much that everything was now appearing in slow-motion for me. I felt jittery, like I was comprised of static atop a blank background. Drunk on this pure energy and my own well of anger, I caught my breath and took two strides forward before I delivered a kick to the table that had separated the two sides, McLeod v. Kannos, the wall between boundaries. With a yelp from Rie, the table overturned, spilling a multitude of datapads and papers all over the place with an enormous clatter.

Too enraged to speak, I simply lifted my gun and held it at Iroa, who was paralyzed in place, transfixed after seeing all the members of his most immediate family fall in front of him. His eyes spoke volumes, pleading for forgiveness, understanding, and more, but from somewhere, I could not even begin to explain how, a glint of stubbornness resided, defiant at being snuffed out.

As I scanned the room, I saw that Chandler was carefully guarding Kraana, his hand poised to deliver another blow if she tried any more funny business. Rie was pressed against the wall, fearful and shocked, most assuredly unused to being involved in an altercation like this before. I couldn't blame her, I remembered the first time that I had been in a serious fight and at least she had enough luck to emerge from this unscathed.

Nya walked over and gently placed a hand on my chest. "You okay? You're bleeding."

"Just fine…" I muttered hoarsely. "I'll live. _This_ bastard, however…"

I inched forward until my pistol was inches away from Iroa's glass covering. Nya's father blankly stared into the black barrel, momentarily uncomprehending the inherent danger. I was hurt, tired, and pissed off – not a good combination of emotions for someone to be in while handling a firearm. In my current state, I was extremely prone to inciting the next act of violence. At least until I came down from my adrenaline high.

"Nyareth…" Iroa choked out.

"What?" she spat.

"Your… _husband_ is pointing his gun at me."

"Is he?" she mockingly replied with a dramatic glance in my direction. "I'm so sorry. You know, it's a reaction he normally reserves for people who threaten me or our friends. Oh… _wait a minute_ …"

"I swear to you," Iroa pleaded as he raised his hands for protection, "this is not how I intended things to be. I don't know what Kraana and Eyzn were thinking! They were too overzealous-,"

"Yeah, well, I don't think that this is going to be what you were intending, either," Nya sighed as she whipped out a small device from a pocket on her hip and slapped the omni-cuffs directly onto Iroa's wrists.

The man could only stare dumbly as the bands encircling his wrists lit up with a hazy orange color and immediately tried to break free. No luck, the bonds were unmovable and fastened snugly around his limbs. It always helped to have a few C-Sec grade pieces of equipment lying around – the things were practically unbreakable. Unless Iroa had an omni-crack program specifically handy, there was no way he was going to get loose any time soon. Cop equipment really is second to none.

"What in-," Iroa stammered as he lifted his bound wrists. "Nyareth, don't do this!"

She ignored him as she stepped into the space the table used to occupy before I had thoroughly dismantled it and hauled the man to his feet by grabbing at the scarf that hung around his neck and yanking upward hard enough to make Iroa gag.

"We're not staying here, Sam," Nya said as she tossed another pair of omni-cuffs to me and another to Chandler. "We're taking this _bosh'tet_ with us too. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not keen on being imprisoned with a bunch of strangers that I've just met. Agreed?"

"Sure," Chandler nodded as he applied his pair of omni-cuffs onto a limp Kraana upon the floor.

"Yeah," Rie said shakily as she tried to appear brave.

I slapped my omni-cuffs onto Eyzn and used them to haul the man to his feet. He was groaning, his legs wobbly. The quarian was still nearly paralytic with pain after a knee to the balls. Unsportsmanlike maybe, but anything is fair play when your life is on the line. Not like I was going to apologize any time soon.

"Now _we're_ the ones taking hostages?" I asked in confirmation.

"Not exactly," Nya said. "They tried to confine us first. I just want to get more answers out of my father before I turn him in to the authorities."

I gave Eyzn's back a shove. "Can we take Macho Man with us? I'm not going to feel comfortable leaving him behind just so that he can chase after us."

"Yeah, okay. Bring him too."

With our captives in tow, we quickly vacated the room after an inconspicuous glance into the hallway. Seeing that the coast was clear, we scurried back out the ship the way we had come, traversing through the dim and dank hallways towards the exit ramp leading outside.

From where she was trussed up on the ground, Kraana gave a shout, "You won't be able to hide for long! I have an entire company of marines on this ship! We will find you and I will get my husband back! You're dead, all of you!"

What a charming woman, I thought to myself.

Conversely to Kraana's claim, the exit to the ship was devoid of any marine guards as they were most likely placed in other locations throughout the ship. Or maybe there just was not enough manpower to assign guards to doors in hallways. Oddly convenient, as it left us able to leave the shuttle freely without me having to risk my face getting exposed to any more punches or head-butts. I had enough brain damage as it was.

We scurried from one ship to the next upon the cliff's makeshift landing pad, hurrying up the nearby ramp to the _Obtruder_. Once inside, we shoved Iroa and Eyzn into a spare conference room, a place where they had the least amount of opportunities to cause any trouble (although Iroa did manage to spout something in Khelish before we unceremoniously closed the door on him). There would be plenty of time to chat later. Chandler elected to guard the two of them, with a gun now in hand from my ship's small armory. If the two prisoners had any inclinations of escaping, they were most likely to be dashed after seeing Chandler utilize his biotics against Kraana so effectively.

After one last check to make sure that our quarian "guests" were secured, I clambered up to the copilot's seat, where Nya was already working at getting the _Obtruder_ off the ground.

"Where we headed?" I asked her. "Back to the capitol?"

"No," she said, eyes forward and determined. "Not just yet."

Biting my lip, I almost voiced a protest. Shouldn't we at least get these two into custody first before questioning them? Or did Nya believe that this was her only chance to wrest additional answers out of her father before it could be lost by turning them in? I had a bad feeling about this entire thing, but I had to consider the fact that, in all honesty, this really was not my business. This was all about Nya's side of the family, not mine. She deserved to know the entire truth and it would be unfair for me to deny her that.

The inertia dampeners reduced the vibration from the yacht's motion and it was only by looking at the feeds from the external cameras did I see that the yacht had dropped into the valley that the cliffs bordered, barely traveling a couple hundred feet above the jungle canopy to the point where we were skimming the tree line. Nya flew the craft for the next fifteen minutes, covering a few hundred miles in the process. The valley below only got greener and greener with a resplendent display of tangled vegetation as we approached additional sources of fresh water while the towering cliffs of impressive sandstone grew higher and higher, dictating our flight path.

Just as I was about to ask if Nya wanted to stop any time soon, she suddenly angled the craft to the left slightly as it began to approach the cliff wall. Concern rising, I had the crazy notion for the tiniest moment that she intended to inexplicably ram the yacht into the solid rock (for whatever reason). Only, instead of gazing at an impassive face this time, the cliff here was marred with hollow voids that stretched on into the rock, tunneling deeper and deeper into the planet.

Of course. The caves. That was what Nya had been intending to find for a place to land as the valley was riddled with an extensive cave system that burrowed deep down into the planet. The best part was that radar and ladar scans could not pierce a rock shielding, so it would take quite a while for anyone to find us, even if they were searching very hard.

Nya's eyes could have been comprised of solid iron, for she could only stare in anger as she expertly maneuvered the _Obtruder_ to set down in one of the entrances wide enough to accommodate the yacht. She flipped switches on the holopad like it was second nature to her, completely engrossed in her activity. Once the ship itself settled on a firm surface, she did not allow herself to relax, even when I patted her back reassuringly, rubbing my fingers upon the stretched surface of her enviro-suit and the worn fabric of her clan's hood. She just turned to me, her voice deadly quiet as she spoke.

"There. Now we can begin."

* * *

 **A/N: I really did not expect this chapter to take so long to get completed. Let this be a lesson to any aspiring writers out there: reviewing your work does wonders. The first draft of this chapter was a total mess, for example, that it took me five days to edit the entire thing into something that I found reasonably acceptable. In the end, I more than doubled the length of the first draft, which only serves to remind me just what a colossal disaster I had written in the beginning.**

 **Ugh, well, at least I'm finally done with it. Really guys, a second draft is perhaps the most important thing you can do while writing. Honestly, that's where the story really comes alive.**

 **After this debacle, I'm going to have to remind everyone that, with the release of _Andromeda_ in a week (not counting you EA Access folks) I'm going to be indisposed until I manage to complete that game so I won't have the next chapter out for some time. Don't worry, this story is far from dead as I have everything outlined and ready to go - it's just going to take a bit longer than usual. Who knows? I might get some new ideas from that game and it's quite exciting to have a new _Mass Effect_ game being released in such a short time. Personally, I can't wait.**

 **Reviews:**

 **Lama: My experience with Santa Cruz has also been a mixed bag. I have met some wonderfully nice people there whenever I've visited, but also had one random encounter with a stranger that questioned me why there were so many "Satanists" in the town. Needless to say, I had no idea how to answer him and went on my merry way. I don't think anyone can predict what they're going to see when they visit Santa Cruz, but I used my positive perceptions of the town to shape the image of how I imagined it to be in the future. Not saying it's accurate, just wanted to help with the imagery a bit.**

 **Soundtrack Sampler:**

 **Sam and Eyzn Struggle (Eyzn Theme Incarnation I): "Young Cal" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_. Honestly, the movie was trash and the score a letdown, but Kurzel did introduce a rather unique and avant-garde palate for the film itself. It was just a complete mismatch with the narrative, though. Kurzel's use of electronics and percussion give a very dirty and dusty feel to the entire score that creates some vivid imagery. It's not for everyone but I still recommend a listen if you appreciate a bit of subtlety from a modern-day blockbuster.**


	9. Chapter 9: Wounds Ripped Open

Routine. Always routine.

The day cycle meant nothing to the lone presence inside the bunker. Organics were bound by nature to succumb to their desire to rest, a trait that did not affect the individual at all. Not that it could comprehend exactly the very notion of sleep. It was intelligent, but it could not "sense" as an organic could.

Its inability to slip into a temporary coma each night did come with some advantages. It literally had all the time it needed to perform each of its proper housekeeping duties within its zone of influence. Every seventeen hours it would always be on hand to monitor the generator's power levels, making sure that they were not drawing too much or too little of a charge from the geothermal plant buried several miles underneath the surface. Every twenty hours, the air filtration services, which included the occasional filter replacement as they became saturated over time from gases other than the nitrogen-oxygen combination that comprised most of the breathable air on Rannoch. Even though it had no lungs, it still realized that this building needed air for any residents to breathe were any to come by this place again.

It had been centuries since this place had hosted any life, but that did not discourage the individual from trying to keep it livable. Such was its duty – it had to be done, if no one else would step up.

It had a perfect record of each individual second across all the years it had been stationed here. Not once did it register the concept of "boredom" upon itself. There was a job to be had here and it needed doing. If it was not needed in this place, then it would move somewhere else, of course. Simply put, it resided where it felt it was needed. There was purpose to be gained from that and, if it were able, it would never classify such a purpose as being boring.

Which was markedly different from being _predictable_. It had been so long without any major interruptions that the individual had its routine down pat, down to the millisecond. This only strengthened its resolve to be efficient in its duties, which was something that it was about to go and perform, until it detected a slight deviation in the data.

Something was different today.

In its true "view," it only saw the world as a collection of 1s and 0s – binary. The day's duties had all been memorized in its "head" but it was able to tell immediately that, on line 151, a sequence of the binary code was dissimilar to the code it had been expecting. It was foolish to question the deviation, the data never lied.

But where had this new data come from? The individual spread out its focus so that it could simulate a more organic sensation, even if the results were somewhat rudimentary in their function.

Ah, there it was.

Now, it could _feel_ the aberration in the air itself. Its receptors were not as attuned as an organic's but they still worked at a basic level. Nevertheless, the individual still managed to recognize the telltale signs of oxygen displacement as it picked up the auditory cues and the minute seismic readings that impacted upon its frame. In short, it felt a draft. This only meant one thing.

It had visitors. After all this time.

Simulated emotions of caution and concern replaced the initial elation. Of course it was intrigued at the fact that newcomers had finally arrived in this place after so long, but it only knew that they were close and not their true intentions. It had survived long enough to realize that Rannoch was a volatile place to remain for anyone and that the best chance of survival was to ensure that its geographic footprint had been diminished as small as it could muster. During its periods of downtime, the individual recognized that its discovery was an eventuality and, by and large, not something that should be resisted. Despite the fact, however, that it was not intending to be discovered quite so soon. It was confused; it had made sure to cover its tracks accordingly and to reduce its profile in the area, so how had this come to happen?

The entire time this revelation had been analyzed, the individual had been sitting totally still upon the bench in the tiny room it was in. Enveloped in total darkness, it had no use for light, a fact that continued to separate its existence from that of an organic. In the silence, it continued to analyze its predicament, all without uttering a single word.

So, if the arrival of these newcomers was not caused by the detection of the individual, then the only alternative could be that sheer coincidence brought them to this place. It made sense, there could have been records of this building locked away in areas not accounted for, areas far beyond its sphere of influence that could not have been adequately predicted with the data at hand. Perhaps anecdotal records, spread by word of mouth, could have played a part in the discovery of this location? If it were truly alive, it would have been frustrated at its inability to come up with a definitive result.

Seeing as how there was a distinct gap in the logic of its situation, the individual came up with a quick course of action that would have taken much longer for an organic to accomplish. There was no point in remaining put – that time was now past. It needed to find out for itself whether this development – the newcomers - brought either doom or salvation to its existence. With the amount of empirical evidence it had amassed, it was unsure of the latter outcome, but it would find that out in due time.

Soundlessly standing up on ancient legs, it strode over to where it kept the rifle upon the makeshift table. The weapon itself was just as old as it was, but completely immaculate, scourged free of dust – not an easy endeavor in this environment. The figure picked up the Spitfire and gently rotated the barrel, making sure that it was properly oiled and operated smoothly. It then reached out and gently took a couple ammo blocks – the Spitfire itself chewed through ammunition at an insanely fast rate and the figure knew that it was better to account for as many circumstances as it could conceive.

It made no noise as it hefted the heavy weapon, no grunts, creaks, or groans. There was no need to practice aiming it – it had all the proper movements memorized completely. As a precaution, it flicked on the laser sighting function, allowing a bright red beam to harmlessly slice through the air. This was not for its own benefit, but it knew that such a sight could suffice as a proper warning in case the trespassers turned out to be hostile. In all of its years, it knew that nothing humbled a person more than staring down the barrel of a weapon or if a laser sight was trained at the center of mass.

As it left the safety of the cramped room, something deep inside the figure resembled a fragile hope. A hope that the trigger of the weapon would not have to be pulled. It had not taken a life in decades and, despite the oddity of it all, it was not an encounter it would prefer to reenact once again.

A single line of binary code automatically generated across its display in order to keep its expectations lowered.

* * *

Elsewhere

One didn't need a medical degree to determine that, based upon Nya's furious body language as she stormed over to the _Obtruder's_ conference room, that all hell was about to break loose.

Before she could make it to the one boundary separating her from her father, I quickly placed my hands upon Nya's shoulders and guided her off of her track for just a moment. She jerked in my grip, desperate to barge into the room where our two "guests" were currently housed and no doubt subject them to perhaps the full extent of her rage. If I knew Nya, and I'm quite confident in saying that I know her pretty well, she was not going to have much of a forgiving attitude, even if these men were technically part of her family.

In her mind, she had pretty much started the process of disowning them ever since they had displayed the tiniest inkling of violence in my direction. It would be hard for Iroa or Eyzn to sufficiently justify that to my angry wife.

"I'm going to kill him," Nya growled in my arms, confirming my suspicions. "Let me go, Sam! I'm going to tear that _bosh'tet_ a new-,"

"Nya, wait," I admonished before I slowly pressed her up against the wall in an effort to calm her down.

Nya stilled, but the fire in her eyes did not diminish. "Move out of my way, Sam. Let me speak with my… _father_."

The final word sounded like it took a lot of effort to even make it past Nya's lips and I sympathized with her. After spending her entire life with such an elaborately crafted lie surrounding her parentage, she had every right to be upset as she was. Hell, I would be too were I in her position. I was actually pretty damn mad regardless, but as much as I also shared the sentiment in beating Iroa for his belligerence, my conscience was desperately pulling me in the direction of a less rash decision.

Odd. Usually I was the one with the first inclination to hit someone.

"You _will_ speak with him," I assured her, "but only after you rein in your desire to murder him. God damn it, Nya, look at me!"

Nya had scornfully glanced away from me but slowly moved her head back, her eyes levelling daggers back at mine. I said no more and simply scowled in warning. As I slowly breathed in and out, I refused to release her from the wall until she was breathing at my tempo. Ever so slightly, I could feel the air rushing through her body begin to slow. Her pulse calmed, her lungs relaxed, and her posture eventually went limp with a sigh.

Relieved, I pulled Nya in for a hug – an acknowledgement that she had someone in her life that fiercely cared for her, that knew her better in those panicked moments when she forgot herself. My wife shuddered and eventually returned the hug while her head gently rested on my chest for a moment.

I lightly used a hand to tip her helmet upward. "Nya… fuck, I… I can't even begin to imagine what you're feeling right now. Even… I can't really describe it either. To learn that your father is still alive…"

"He wouldn't have been alive for very long if you hadn't stopped me," Nya growled, but there was a light tinge in her words that I knew she was being slightly facetious. Only slightly.

"Do you want to talk a bit before we go in there?"

"I don't know. What's there to talk about?"

I stared at Nya blankly, not sure if I heard her correctly. "Nya, there's _everything_ to talk about! Your father is less than ten feet away from you, certainly not dead, and you _don't_ want to talk about it? I'd be rushing from person to person if I were in your position, wanting to talk their ear off about my dad."

"Yeah well, you didn't have a bastard of a father who left you before you were even born. I'd think, that if you were truly in my position, you'd want nothing more than to hurt him."

"I don't know. If it were my dad… I don't know."

"Easy for you to say," Nya scoffed dismissively. "You will never have to face this like me. At least you know for sure that _your_ father's dead."

My innards hardened and a chill gripped me. My fingers automatically released their hold on Nya's shoulders and I took a step back, my features momentarily frozen in disbelief.

Instantly Nya realized what she said, eyes panicked behind her crimson visor. "I… I didn't mean that," she said meekly.

"I think you did," was my stern reply. "I'm just hoping that you phrased it wrong."

"Sam, I would never, in my life, insinuate that your father being dead is a good thing!"

"So you'd immensely prefer it if your father was dead too? Is that how you want to frame it?"

"Yes! - I mean, no! - I mean… I don't know what I mean."

 _Liar_ , the thought suddenly erupted in my brain.

"I… I wasn't really going to…" she continued to mumble.

For perhaps the first time since I met her, the quarian in front of me was appearing more alien than I had ever seen her before. The fact that she was fully suited, the shape of her body barely congruous to mine, and that I could not see her face, now was resonating on me at the volume set to max. An initial spear of repulsion passed through me before I regained my true self and forced it out of me, causing me to inhale deeply as these inclinations burned away like a morning fog.

"Stop," the lone word spilled out from my mouth. "No more." One breath, then another. Waiting for her nonverbal cue – there it was! The slight cock of the head. Her confusion, desire for clarification.

"S-Sam?"

"I believe you," I finally uttered before I waved away any more chances for her to speak. "It's done. I know you didn't mean it that way."

"I'm so sorry, Sam," Nya pleaded. "I honestly didn't want to word it like that. I just… meant that you would never truly know how this feels for me. I've had to live my entire life with the knowledge that my father was both dead and a traitor. Just an hour ago I saw evidence to the contrary that disproved one of those claims. Have you ever felt so… confused, angry, and scared all at the same time?"

For the first time since we landed, I managed to crack a tight smile. "You realize that you're talking to someone who still believes that he's currently residing in a different universe right? The crazy human who thinks he's from 2015?"

"Oh," was her reply, her eyes noticeably drooping as she remembered.

I just chuckled and pulled Nya in a hug again, finding that warmth from our shared feelings. "They're still totally different situations. I might have some clue as to what you're going through, but you're right in the fact that I will probably never know exactly the intensity of the emotions you're feeling. At the very least, I can empathize with you."

"Heh," Nya choked up a laugh as she buried her helmeted head in my chest once more. "You know, I would have thought that you would be the one who wanted to kill my dad the most."

"Ugh. That depends entirely on him, but I'm not really going to hold my breath. Besides, I'm kind of interested in him trying to justify his pathetic life some more – which if you do end up killing him before he blabs, then we'll never know the entire story, will we?"

"I… I wasn't really serious about that…" Nya timidly squeaked out.

"Yeah, right. You really going to tell me that you weren't at least considering it?"

Her eyes darted left and right, then up and down. One of her hands even came up to her hood in the imitation of scratching her head – a tic that she probably developed from me. Literally deciding on if she could get away with a white lie. I loved the woman immensely, but she really was a terrible liar.

"Well… yeah. I kind of was," she finally admitted.

Not that it mattered much, but I did appreciate her honesty. It just made her a more genuine person in my eyes.

I blew air from my mouth as I ruffled my hair in wonder. "Jesus, this entire thing is just unbelievable. You really didn't know he was your father until he told you?"

Nya's eyes widened in confusion as she timidly shook her head. "Why would I have ever thought that? I mean, why would have had any cause to disbelieve all the people who informed me of my father's supposed death? My mother… she told me so but she had no idea of the truth. And Iroa… Iroa is such a common name on the flotilla… I didn't even think to make the connection at first!"

"Okay, okay. I get it, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to walk in there – _calmly_ – and try to have as casual of a conversation as possible with this man. I'd rather not wind up repeating that little scuffle back on their ship. I've got enough scars as it is."

Nya placed a hand on her hip as she looked at me in amusement. "You know you could have just called on me for help when you were struggling with Eyzn and not tried to be all macho about it by handling it yourself. I _am_ a C-Sec officer, remember?"

"Blame testosterone. Males, no matter the species, would rather take all the blows for their woman rather than chance them getting hurt. Call it our protective instincts."

"That's a dumb excuse. If I'm fully capable, which I am, I can certainly help you subdue a person every now and then."

"But what if you really do get hurt?"

"You want me to hit you?" Nya raised a fist in jest.

"Perish the thought," I comically took a step back, allowing the two of us a quick moment to laugh together before we composed ourselves, ready for the trials ahead.

We then turned to head into the room, whereupon I internally braced myself for a tense exchange of words. Emphasis on tense. The doors parted to reveal both Iroa and Eyzn seated at the lone booth, their cuffed hands placed firmly in front of them. The room itself was unspectacular, with the same polished black floor and steel gray table found in any one of the rooms on the _Obtruder_. A row of cabinets lined the walls above the heads of the quarians, and a miniature sink took up the opposite side of the room, along with a rack for dishes.

Where they were situated, Iroa sat ramrod straight while Eyzn was comparatively hunched over, probably still feeling the aftereffects from the rather unsportsmanlike blow I had laid upon him. Not that I was regretting my choice of action – the man's confidence needed to be taken down a few notches. Eyzn should now be considering the fact that fights are rarely as honorable in real life as they are in the movies. People don't just stand by and trade blows in some kind of dance – fights are ugly, bloody, and extremely uncoordinated. If Eyzn had an inkling about just how dangerous getting into a fight really was, he should have seen my knee blow coming a mile away if he had some common sense.

Near the doorway, Chandler ceased leaning against the wall, as did Rie who stood next to him. Both of their faces looked drained, tired. The quarians must have been giving them an earful in the short time they had been alone together.

"Hey, guys. They giving you any trouble?" I softly asked as I faced Chandler.

Rie just shuffled past, her eyes blank, as she mumbled something about needing some fresh air. Chandler waited until she was out of sight before he gave a tepid shrug.

"They're amenable to their situation," Chandler explained, "but they've got some… rough views. Watch out, they're _very_ content on sharing."

"Not a problem," I murmured as Nya and I took our seats across from the two. "Depending on their behavior, we might actually be in somewhat of a receptive mood." I then sourly eyed Iroa. " _Might_ be."

Right as we settled ourselves, Iroa leaned forward, his eyes firmly fixated on his daughter. "Nyareth, I don't know what you're thinking right now, but you have to believe me when I say that this was in no way the plan for us. I mean that."

Iroa gave a dismissive elbow to Eyzn's upper arm at that, but the younger quarian merely gave a disinterested grunt and made a show of glancing away from us.

Nya was not putting up with any of it. "Cut the crap, fath-… _Iroa_. I'm not even going to give you the satisfaction of referring to you as my parent, so we're getting that out of the way. I don't know how you could possibly think that your intentions are not so blatantly self-serving after that display back there, let alone expect me to believe them. Siccing Eyzn on Sam was not the way to win my trust, first of all. He could have been seriously hurt!"

Eyzn gave a dramatic groan as he finally contemplated me. Just looking at the man managed to unnerve me. This was someone who truly did have the steel to back up his words. He was no pansy like Vhen was. This was a very intelligent individual who seemed determined to oppose me at every turn. If I had any shred of self-preservation, I should have been a little more frightened simply from sharing a room with him.

"Someone… _was_ hurt," Eyzn hissed, enunciating each syllable slowly as he was most likely imagining my death in the most painful of ways.

"Mess with the bull, you get the horns," I retorted, hoping that my glib words could reinforce my courage a bit.

"Is it a human thing to spout off idiom after idiom or is it just you? Exactly how original are you with your comments?"

"You can thank the extranet for that. Any originality in my body has been thoroughly eradicated by years of sitting in front of a screen."

With a groan, Eyzn straightened from his hunched position while his hands momentarily massaged the area where I had struck him. "Very disappointing to hear. Despite your rather poor attitude, I still find you… interesting, Sam."

I jittered slightly from a silent laugh. "If you're about to ask to kiss me, I'm going to punch you in the face."

"Please," Eyzn chuckled. "Don't give yourself that much credit. Besides, punching me would only hurt you more than me. I believe that scratch on your head should be a testament to that fact."

I rubbed at the red mark on my head at his words. Mental note: headbutting a quarian is not a solid course of action… at least when their suits are still on.

"You never know, I'm a bit of a slow learner when it comes to fighting."

"So I've seen. Never were a soldier, right?"

"Militia, believe it or not. Served as a medic during the war."

"Now things are starting to make sense," the young quarian crowed. "Untrained, penchant for quips, little combat experience. No wonder you could barely mount a defense."

"Except that I managed to beat you, remember? Must sting, seeing as you constantly compare me to someone who's been in the service. I assume that part about you is correct, yes?"

"I've had some training," Eyzn shrugged. "Nothing substantial. The usual regimen and all that per flotilla standards. It may seem advanced to the untrained eye, but I confess that fighting is not my strongest suit, despite my advantage over you."

"Enlighten me. What is your strongest suit when it's not beating others to a pulp?"

Eyzn looked up at the ceiling for a second in thought. "Well, I would have to say that my primary area of expertise would have to be… related to the _biology_ field, of sorts."

I bumped my eyebrows in surprise. "Really? Scientist or farmer? Which one?"

The young quarian just glared at me in a combination of exasperation and hopelessness. "What do you think?" he sighed.

"You remember to lock the barn door before you went out for the day?"

"You're constantly becoming less and less amusing as time goes on, do you realize that?"

"I have an unhealthy habit of pissing off people I don't like, I'll admit."

"Quite the shame, for I was hoping that we could at least become friends after this debacle is behind us."

I gave a raspberry. "I'd say that whatever it is that you've been smoking, you need to dial it back a bit."

"Are you accusing me of being irrational? Funny, because I would have thought that trying to procreate with a member of a different species would be a textbook example of irrationality – despite the fact that my sister has technically done the same." Eyzn then slowly glanced around the room in a dramatic fashion, his eyes scanning every facet of the environment. "A trend that, I'm noticing, is rather commonplace within our little social circle. Humans fornicating with turians and quarians? Might as well try to sweet-talk a hanar, considering the debauchery you people are exhibiting. An interesting mix, I would have thought that you humans would rather lie with a species that could actually result in creating more of your spawn. Isn't that your ultimate objective anyway? Such short-sightedness to come from a-,"

I knew that Eyzn's intentions were to goad me into another brawl with him, as his diatribe was proving immensely effective in making my blood pressure rise dramatically. However, I was still nursing the bruises from our last bout so I was dead-set on not escalating matters that far.

It did not mean that I was not going to be gentle when it came to shutting him up.

"Enough rhetoric out of you," I growled as I suddenly stood up and grabbed at the straps of Eyzn's suit, causing him to be unceremoniously yanked across the table and onto the floor with a cacophony of noises from both his body and his yelps.

Eyzn's cuffed hands thrashed uselessly as he was hauled to his feet. He muttered curse after curse as he was obviously intent on spewing his misguided messages out for all to hear. The entire time, Iroa simply sat back, looking like he would be anywhere else in his embarrassment.

While I had been looking at Iroa, though, one of Eyzn's elbows swung through the air and impacted squarely on my nose. I yowled and nearly let go of the quarian, incensed at the fact that I had been distracted enough to let Eyzn get the better of me.

And then a warm and wet sensation started to dribble down my face, coming from my nose. I stuck my tongue out and tasted a salty, iron flavor that could not be mistaken for anything else. I pinched my nostrils shut as I realized that my nose was bleeding, attempting to stem the flow while reigning in my desire to plant a firm blow to Eyzn's kidneys as revenge.

Desperate to put some distance between the quarian, I shoved a cackling Eyzn in Chandler's direction, a scowl hidden by my hand as stray trails of blood trickled down around my mouth.

"Storage closet," I directed with my free hand. "Fucker hit my face. Lock him in there until he stops harrang… _shit_ , my nose hurts."

"Oh, with pleasure," Chandler flashed Eyzn a nasty grin as he yanked him out the door. "I would love to hear him continue to justify his views with my girlfriend present. We'll see if he's really brave or stupid then."

Chandler gave a final chuckle before the doors slid shut, leaving just Nya and I alone with Iroa. At least the silence was a major improvement already. Gingerly, I wiggled the bridge of my nose, finding it to still be unyielding. Good, that meant it had not been broken. Already the flow of blood was starting to subside from my nostrils, yet it did not mean that my face nor my shirt had escaped discoloration.

I used a damp rag from the sink to wipe off my blood-stained face and dabbed a bit at the collar of my shirt to try and remove the worst of the stains. While I was doing that, a slight tickle began to crop up near the back of my throat as well as an itch upon my eyelids. I ignored them for now, there were bigger things to focus on than slight discomforts such as those.

Gratefully sighing, I threw the red-soaked rag into a nearby trash can and strode back to the table. As I lowered myself back down at my chair, I realized that I was already feeling a load off my chest from Eyzn's absence. Cutting out abrasive personalities certainly does wonders.

I gave an impish glance at Nya, who had been looking at me with alarm the entire time.

"Told you I'd take all the blows."

She just shook her head in derision. "You keep getting yourself hurt and soon you'll realize that your thick head can only protect you for so long."

"Ouch. I'm hurt, Nya."

A harrumphing sound emitted from Iroa as he ostensibly grew more irritated with the lack of attention being focused onto him. Irritably, Nya and I gave him bitter glances as we were brought back to the reality of having to converse with this man.

"You two quite finished yet?" Iroa asked, voice stiff.

"It's called _banter_ , you prude," I responded. "Married couples do it all the time. Something that you probably lacked in _your_ relationships, from what I've seen."

"You are arrogant in assuming that you know all about me. Perhaps Eyzn was right in trying to knock some sense into you."

"Yes, that's quite the son you've got there, Iroa," I drolly commented. "An all-around stand-up guy, if you ask me. Must be a real hit with the ladies, literally and figuratively speaking."

" _Step-son_ ," Iroa corrected as he suddenly became concerned with wiping the dust that had accumulated on the desk in front of him. "Eyzn's own father died when he was very young. I adopted him when I married his mother. Suffice to say that I've only ever fathered one child. After all these years, do you not think it's right that I get to look upon that child at some point, considering how much I've suffered?"

" _You've_ suffered?" Nya was incredulous. "You don't get to say that! In no way do you get to say that to my face! You've never had to face ridicule day after day with your stigma practically plastered on my back. You never had to endure the teasing, the bullying, and the fighting with my shipmates that I've gone through because you broke the law. You ruined my life!"

To my surprise, Iroa actually had the audacity to look at me, as if he thought that I would back him up in this. Was he simple? Did he not realize that I was clearly not on his side? The evidence was too overwhelmingly against him and I was not going to betray my wife anytime soon.

I scrunched up my face in disgust. "What are you looking at me for? I've seen firsthand how she was treated on the flotilla. People barely even looked at her, one fellow called Vhen even made it his mission to verbally abuse her every chance he got."

"Look," Iroa turned back to Nya, "I believe that you've gone through a tough time on the flotilla. How many times can I apologize before it becomes right? I had to see you at least once, just to let you know that I was alive and that you had been lied to your entire life. Would you not do the same, were you in my position?"

"I don't think that you had to hold us at gunpoint to accomplish that," Nya gritted sharply, not buying the man's sob story for one second. "Personally, a simple extranet call would have sufficed."

"I thought of that, but I eventually decided that I had to see your reaction in person. Perhaps I should not have brought Kraana and Eyzn along – I had no idea that their emotions would run that hot and that so many unforeseen memories could cause you confusion."

"You weren't thinking of anyone else except yourself," I pointed out. "Surely you had to have had some idea of how Nya was going to react – I mean, you're her father and she thought you were dead! How else _could_ she respond to news like that? For that matter, how the hell did you ever meet your new wife in the first place? Let me guess, she was an exile like yourself – no other way it could be. What was she exiled for? Illegal research just like you? Murder? Insider trading? Indecent exposure?"

Iroa fidgeted for a moment, obviously torn at having to confront a topic that was rather uncomfortable for him. I leaned forward, silently pressing for him to reveal an answer.

"She… Kraana may have traded sensitive information in exchange for foreign tech… to the batarians."

That was a bit unexpected. I was expecting a dodge or a canned answer, something that would serve as an appropriate deflection but this was a bit more surprising that I had been anticipating and it was clear that Nya thought so as well because her entire posture jolted upright like she had just made contact with a live wire.

"So…" Nya gave a deathly whisper, "she's a traitor."

Iroa shook his head defiantly. "No! She's no traitor! She was just a bit… misguided, that's all."

Nya was in complete disbelief. "That's… all? It's one thing to sell secrets to someone but when you're selling them to the one race that makes its living off of slave profiteering and sanctioned murder, then that's about as treasonous as it gets!"

"She was desperate!"

"We _all_ were desperate! You didn't see _me_ whoring out our people in order to get a leg up! How could you possibly find it within yourself to latch onto such an evil woman such as her?!"

Iroa stood up, furious. "I told you not to talk about Kraana like that!"

Nya similarly matched his actions, also angered beyond belief. This was the part that I knew things were going to get a bit ugly. Nya had a whole lifetime of bitterness she could draw from and Iroa's trials were nothing in comparison. If she weren't related to the man, I suspect that she would have clocked him upside the head at this point.

"Easy for you to say after being _dead_ my entire life! ' _Oh, not only is my father still alive but I have a new mother and a brother as well?_ ' If you think I'm going to accept all of you into my family right away then you're hopelessly deluded."

The elder quarian raised his bound hands in a pleading gesture. "If you only knew… what I did during my captivity… all that time I did Xen's dirty work I could only think of you – the daughter I had never seen. I knew you were out there and I knew that Xen was most likely keeping secret tabs on you, but she would never disclose any information to me. I held out the hope that, if I worked dutifully, I would be able to see you for the first time."

Nya held out her hands mockingly, eyes slit in disapproval. "Well, you've seen me. You've threatened me. Was this really the pinnacle of your ambitions? I'd be disappointed if it was."

"Please! Everything I did was to give you a better life! My work helped our people – helped you!"

"I sincerely doubt that," my wife spat.

"It's true! While Xen would eventually use my AI work to try and carve out Rannoch for herself, it was _my_ innovations that turned the tide during the war, the achievements that Xen attributed to herself. I was the one who developed the miniaturized arc projector into the pistol form! I was the one who created the countermeasure code that temporarily disrupted the geth's processes! And who do you think it was that created the portable targeting device that was capable of cutting through the geth jammers? Not Xen, that's for sure. She's brilliant in many ways but I don't think the woman has ever written a line of code in her life. All she does is take credit for the work the poor souls trapped underneath her heel have created!"

"It's a pity she didn't keep you there for longer," I interjected without any sign of remorse. "That way our vacation wouldn't have been fucked up from your unbelievable incompetence in trying to reconnect with your daughter."

"I already told you that I made a mistake-!"

"Understatement of the century, that. Everything that you could have done, you did incorrectly. You barged onto us without warning – with a company of marines – dumped a crapload of information on us both and proceeded in an attempt to keep us in captivity. And before you try to deflect the blame," I added as I saw Iroa perk up in preparation to explain himself, "no one's going to believe you if you say that you had no idea that this was going to occur. Either you were in on the entire thing or you're just an idiot."

"But I didn't know!" Iroa said lamely.

"Then you're an idiot," I gestured matter-of-factly, completely unsurprised.

"And you're nothing but an intruder – a false member of this family!" the man retorted.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"What I mean is that my daughter should not be associated with the likes of you – a human. What advantage could you possibly have over someone of her own species? What made you choose her instead of your own kind?"

Dumbstruck, my mouth dropped open slightly. _He really didn't just say that, did he?_ Before I could muster a flabbergasted response (insult), Nya leaned forward, her eyes dangerous as she similarly shook with rage.

" _I_ chose him," she defiantly responded.

Her father's fixed stare gradually grew more and more glum as he found no warmth, no support from his own daughter. "But… but why?"

The real question was: why the hell should he care? Was Iroa so out of the loop that he had no idea that cross-species relationships were pretty much the norm now? It was at the point where a human could be dating a completely different species and no one would even bat an eye, and vice versa for any other race in this galaxy. Even the insular quarians were not above this – interracial bonds were not taboo, and I've certainly never heard of a mass movement lately to only keep their relationships completely in their own race.

I think it was thanks to the war that no one saw any point in deriding the relationships people took up these days. After so much death and carnage, people began to seek out love and found it in the most unlikely places. If a human found comfort in the arms of an asari, or if a turian fell in love with a drell, I'd bet that no one would be willing to scrutinize them for their choices. Everyone had gone through so much pain from the war that mocking others for their partner choices just seemed remarkably petty.

Too bad Iroa had missed the memo on that.

"Why?" Nya repeated. "Maybe it was due to the fact that Sam saved me from being beaten to death once just because of my race. Or it could be that he was one of the few people I had met that was interested in talking to me while not caring about any of the stigmas that marred my standing on the flotilla. Yeah, all of my misfortune on the flotilla? All _your_ fault. Good luck trying to get me to sympathize with you after you've just been hanging around the fleet only a few thousand miles away from where I slept."

"I am begging you," Iroa said for the umpteenth time. "I want you to give me just one chance-,"

Nya just shook her head at the pathetic sight of her father groveling. "You still don't get it. You'll probably never get it. Ever since you've revealed your true identity to me you have constantly blown chance after chance with me. You know that Sam never pressed me into forming a relationship with him? It came rather naturally to the both of us as we spent time together – the way that relationships are meant to be formed. By contrast, _you_ just barged into my life and demanded that I treat you like my father. Sam never worshiped me, _Iroa_ , but he did the one thing that no one had ever done to me before: he treated me like an actual person. He respected me, enjoyed my company. How could someone not find that attractive? In the end, after all the verbal abuse I've had to endure from 'my own species,' I was rather relieved to find a suitable mate in a human. At least Sam was intelligent enough to ignore the barbaric stereotypes that still permeate our quarian culture."

Iroa looked rather clueless as he desperately turned his head back and forth to view our faces, finding nothing to invalidate his daughter's words. "And you have no problem with that? You don't find anything… odd about your relationship at all?"

Unbelievable. This guy could not run out of things to bitch about. Now he was questioning the validity of my relationship with my own wife? What the hell was his deal here?

Utterly disgusted, I just sighed and rubbed at my eyes tiredly. "The only 'odd' things about this relationship are perhaps the cosmetic differences. If it matters to you, our marriage has been really happy so far. If you were any decent sort of father, you'd also be happy for your daughter."

Iroa bristled at that. "Do not dare to insinuate that I'm anything but a decent father!"

"Why not? You certainly haven't proved it."

"I'm trying!"

"You're not doing a good job," Nya piped in.

"Because I'm still trying to wrap my mind around why you would choose to be with a human!"

"I just explained this to you!"

I slapped my palm down on the table, hard enough to cause my hand to start stinging. " _Enough_ ," I said firmly, the effort to stare at Iroa herculean in its own right. "Nothing you can say to us is going to make us change our minds about each other. This… deconstruction of our marriage is pointless and a waste of time."

Iroa tested his omni-cuffs once more with a simple flex of his wrists. If anything, he had merely straightened taller the entire time we had been sitting in this room.

"Not to me. I, for one, am still very curious at the intricacies of your bond together. Back when I used to be a free man, it was almost unheard of for a quarian to be involved in a relationship with another race, let alone a human. You are a young species, ignorant of our ways-,"

"That's not going to work," Nya said hotly. "Sam's pretty well educated at how quarian structure is defined and I have a good idea as to what comprises human culture as well."

"Then he's an unsuitable candidate for a mate, judging from his boorish attitude."

Disappointed, I could only give a sad chuckle and shake of my head. "Only toward the people I don't like. Perhaps you're just jealous that I've seen Nya's face for myself and you haven't. How does that feel, knowing that you've never had the chance to look your own daughter in her eyes? I can't really imagine what that could do to someone."

It was easy to see that Iroa was now trembling with the urge to lean over and clean my clock with his fists. If he was not bound, then he probably would have launched himself at me by then. I had obviously hit the man where it hurt the most – after spending nearly thirty years separated from a daughter he had never met, to be constantly reminded of his absenteeism and of his failure to make a definite impression on his child's life was weighing heavily on him. It was shameful to him that other people had picked up on this fact quickly, and even worse, had been more impactful for Nya in her life than he ever could hope to be.

The sad thing is that he knew all this, yet chose to believe otherwise.

"My point exactly," Iroa managed to muster through a locked jaw.

All the frustrations that I had been harboring was nearing my boiling point. To hear this man constantly sit and spew his defiant declarations instead of conceding to obvious logic was infuriating. The hypocrisy of it all! The pistol holstered within my jacket pressing uncomfortably against my chest, I slowly stood up from my chair, my hunched posture sending out clear signals that I was going to lay Iroa out if he did not show some signs of cooperation.

Damn, I've never felt this angry since Vhen. Why was it that quarians were the catalysts for making my mood shift towards each extreme end of the emotional spectrum? Unconditional love for Nya, blind hatred for everyone else. To think that I had been more mild-mannered once.

"Sam, no!" Nya clung to me as my face began to turn red. "You're not going to let him win this game. You're better than that."

"No, you're better than him," Iroa interjected. "You don't deserve a human to be your husband – your bondmate. You have put yourself at a clear disadvantage already by choosing him over a quarian."

"And why is that?" Nya sighed, similarly fed up as I was.

Iroa now leaned back, his cuffed hands falling into his lap as he tilted his head, savoring the moment.

"I should think that it would be quite obvious. He'll never give you the thing that you want most."

"What?"

The man gave a simple shrug of his shoulders before the next two words came out of his mouth.

"A child."

 _The one thing…_

It was probably the combination of the entire day's events that finally took its toll upon me. The family revelation, getting headbutted, arguing with a vehement in-law, all of it simply was too much. This was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I had finally had enough.

Ears ringing, face flushed, I abruptly kicked away my chair and stormed straight out of the room, not knowing that my hands were clenched tight enough to rend steel. Ignoring the splutters from Nya, I maneuvered in a daze to the _Obtruder's_ landing ramp, disembarking the yacht in long, purposeful strides. The cool air from the cavern washed over me, emitting a chill upon my skin, but I unconsciously adjusted my jacket and moved on, desperate to put some distance between me and Iroa.

 _I could never give her…_

The cave that Nya had chosen to land in was well lit, pockmarked by holes in the cliff wall that bubbled out into the open air, letting shafts of sunlight pierce the darkness in this otherwise gloomy environment. Pools of filtered water soaked the ground below my boots, making the rock slippery to traverse. It smelled damp in here – almost like pavement did after a spring rainfall. Spikey stalagmites and stalactites jutted out from the ground and the ceiling, creating a jagged landscape that prevented any traversal onto patches of the cavern that had not been worn smooth over the centuries.

As I shoved my hands into my pockets, I kept on walking in a huff. My mind was so scatterbrained that I was not paying that much attention as to where I was going. Therefore, I was missing some pretty incredible sights with regards to the cave formations all around me. Any other time I would be marveling at the impressive rock pillars that held up the ceiling or have stopped to glance at a weird fungus growing on the ground somewhere. Not this time, though. All I could think about was Iroa and his damned comments to my face.

He actually dared to insinuate… _that_ in front of us. Of all the tasteless, inappropriate, and worst of all, absolutely _correct_ things to say, he had said it.

 _The one thing that I couldn't give her._

The one thing I knew she wanted most, even if she had never said so outright.

"Sam!" a voice curved from around the wall behind me. I nearly stopped dead in my tracks, but only managed the action to slow my momentum down just a tad. I kept walking, my head hanging down, as I heard the clomping of boots on the stone floor as Nya jogged up behind me, huffing as she got closer.

As she got within two feet of me, her feet abruptly slid out under her, courtesy of an algae patch, and her arms wheeled as she nearly lost her balance. Before she impacted with the ground, I abruptly turned and grabbed her arm, steadying her in place and allowing her a moment to catch her breath.

"Th-thank you," Nya breathed as she bent her knees to stretch them. "You know it's… wait, where are you going?"

I had started walking away again before Nya could even finish her sentence, my jaw too tightly wound to even utter a syllable. Hell, I was unsure if I could even look at her after what had been said in that ship.

My wife continued to compile a series of protests before she realized that her words were falling on deaf ears. Initially hesitant, she picked up her pace and fell in line at my side. Well, I was not going to tell her to go away and if she had figured that part out, then she probably would have also realized that I was not going to object to her company. She was a quick study; Nya even slid her hand into my grip, holding it firmly so that I could not escape her clutches. I reflexively squeezed back – our signal that everything was going to be fine (so we hoped).

The two of us kept on exploring deeper and deeper into the cave, never once saying anything between the each other, although I kept on trying to put together a string of words for when I _could_ finally talk to Nya again. Five minutes passed, then ten. All the while we journeyed into places that people had never set foot in for centuries, bringing to life to areas once devoid of it, just enjoying the silence. In these moments, everything started to feel normal again. I nearly forgot all about Iroa, Eyzn, the whole sorry affair. It was the times like these where I could be doing something new, alone with my wife, could I really start to experience a sense of tranquility once more. These were the moments that I had been seeking – the definitive endgame.

Yet I knew that I would have to face reality very soon. The two maniacs locked in my shuttle about a few hundred meters back were a thorn in the back of my mind – mostly because of the range of uncomfortably topics they brought up and that I still had no plan of what I was going to do with them in the end.

Forget it, I could decide that later. Right now was for Nya. For me.

As we shimmied through a slim crevasse, neither of us operating under any sense of direction – simply walking for the sake of walking – we came across a large "room" in the cave that was the size of an amphitheater. The ground underneath was coarse and sandy, a few rough columns were all that stood in the wide area, and tiny pinpricks of light speared through the rock to provide all the necessary illumination the place needed. If I looked up, I could see odd furry balls on the ceiling move subtly in response to our intrusion. Bats? Most likely. I'd have to ask Nya if Rannoch indeed contained the equivalent of bats in its ecosystem or if these were just another species entirely. As it was, the hanging blobs of fur were too far away for me to properly discern them, so I could only give a shrug and continue to walk. Better to let the animals be if you had no idea what they were.

Right as the two of us walked into the center of the domed coliseum, Nya insistently tugged on my arm, drawing my gaze.

"Sam, look," she pointed at the wall.

I don't know how she managed to spot it. Nestled into a corner, partially hidden by dark stone, was a little arched passageway, perfectly sized to let a quarian (or a human) pass through it. But what was more interesting that, just a few feet beyond the gate, there was the familiar sight of an impassive entry made of metal, signifying that sights more intriguing lay beyond its boundaries.

A door.

It looked like an ordinary door, but that was the point entirely. Why would there even be a door in this cave? It had to be ancient, built before the quarians had left their planet about three centuries ago. As we approached it, we discovered that, in spite of the length of time that this planet had been absent sentient life, Rannoch would provide no end to its well of secrets.

Tiny lights shimmered upon the door's main display. Unbelievably, it still had power.

"Could it be?" Nya wondered as she stretched out a hand.

As soon as her fingertips brushed the surface, there came a faint whirring sound – the winding of gears and servos inside the opening mechanism. After an initial squeal from rails being unexpectedly being strained from their position that they had been in for decades, the door eventually slid open with a few uneven jerks, unveiling a darkened hallway leading further into the cave.

Unlike the natural formations the cave afforded, the hall the doorway had been obscuring was clearly man-made. The floors were comprised of a brownish-metal, its sheen having dulled over the centuries. The walls were also made of the same material, corrugated in some parts, while other sections lacked covering entirely, letting the ragged rock surfaces of the cave stand in as part of the architecture. Thick dust floated lazily in the air, creating a chalky coating over everything in sight.

This was proof that people had been in this area before, but judging by the circumstantial evidence in front of us, it had certainly been quite a while since anyone living had come through this way. Despite the stressful events from earlier today, I was actually beginning to get excited.

"What the hell is this?" I murmured aloud as we tentatively stepped inside. Our omni-tools contained a flashlight application, which we activated as the light from the sun rapidly faded the further we progressed inside. The beams from our lights revealed nothing more but an unending corridor that turned abruptly to the right about a few dozen meters ahead – with no other obvious pathways visible.

The door to this compound might have had juice, but the rest of the systems looked to be inoperable. Not that we could see any obvious vidscreen consoles that we could look to boot up, but what obvious light fixtures were embedded in the ceiling were obviously dead. There wasn't anything resembling a light switch that we could just casually flick on, nor did we have the tech to search for any power conduits to divert and triage any viable electricity to the area. For now, we would just have to proceed with the only illumination being emitted from our omni-tools.

As we continued to trudge along the hall, a tickle began to build in the back of my throat. Instinctively, I knew what was going to entail in those precious few seconds before it even started. Stopping dead center in the passageway, my eyes widened right before I took a deep breath and unleashed a loud cough that reverberated across the narrow walls to echo further into the complex.

Nya immediately whirled to face me, her glowing eyes cutting through the darkness. I staggered as I continued to hack loudly, my vision graying with each explosive cough. I stumbled backward against a simple bench and sat upon it as I coughed into my hands, getting more and more worried as my throat felt distinctly raw the more I was wracked.

The stray beams from the flashlights caught the multitude of dust particles that remained suspended within the hall. Ah, of course. I was not allergic to dust, but with so much of this crap floating around, it was no wonder that my body would easily become irritated from it. Maybe my previous injury had lowered my overall threshold for irritant tolerance, come to think of it. Add to it the agitation that had previously saturated me from the conversation with Iroa and my healing wounds were ticking time bombs prone to have a disastrous reaction sooner or later.

Taking quick, shallow breaths, I counted to twenty after the final cough subsided before I pulled my hands away. I was unsurprised, yet concerned nonetheless, to see that my palms were bright red, shining with blood.

How many times must I endure this punishment over and over again? When could I finally reach that point when I could be healed?

I heard Nya utter a quiet curse as she yanked out a rag from one of her many hidden pockets in her suit, handed it to me, and procured another so that she could wipe my face clear of the blood that had dribbled down my chin. I crushed the soft fabric in my hands as I wiped them clean, making sure to keep my breathing as even as possible. When Nya finished cleaning my face, I lifted my rag to my mouth, covering it to protect me from inhaling any more dust.

Nya sat down and scooted closer so that she could place a gentle hand at the back of my neck, a soothing touch. As she did so, electric jitters ran down my spine, both from the sheer comfort and the sudden shame that clashed upon me simultaneously. With a ragged sigh, I forced myself to look upon her, to give her my entire gaze that I had been avoiding to do thus far since we had left the _Obtruder_ behind.

"He's right, you know," I croaked out. My voice was weak from all the coughing but the vocal emitter in my throat gave my words the exact same volume as if I was speaking normally. It hurt to talk, still.

"Who? Iroa? Forget him. He's an ass, Sam."

"An ass who managed to make one correct point."

"No, no," Nya protested as her gentle touches upon me hardened into a firm grip as she deliberately gave me a sideways hug. "He was just trying to get a rise out of you. It… it's no big deal."

"Really?" I asked her, unconvinced, as I stared blankly at the wall of the darkened hallway.

Nya nodded. "Absolutely."

Internally, I was wincing hard. "So when he said that I could never give you a child, he was being incorrect about that?"

All movement in Nya stilled and instantly I knew something was up. How long had it been since she had the notion to bring up this topic between us? Why had I not confronted it sooner, for that matter? I was a complete fool – I had assumed that we each had an unsaid understanding that no children was going to come out of this union, at least naturally. That was my mistake, for assuming in the first place rather than confirming for myself. Technically Nya had done the exact same thing by never bringing the subject up, but it was useless to deflect the blame on her.

Why had I not said anything sooner? Was I afraid that Nya would be disappointed? But she had to have known that I could not father a child – surely I did not need to point that out.

Or maybe… I was disappointed in the fact that I would never get to have children with her and that was why I never brought it up.

"I know you've wanted one," I continued before Nya could speak. "You've wanted one for a long while. A kid of our own. I've seen how you react whenever we get close to the topic of children, yet we've never really talked about it, despite how long we've been together. Just… please, Nya… say it to me straight so I don't keep making assumptions. Have you ever wanted to have a child with me?"

"Oh, Sam," Nya struggled, her voice laced with sorrow. A hand came to my cheek, messing up my beard as her thumb rubbed along my skin. "I… I didn't know what you would think…"

"Nya…"

 _I need to hear it. I have to confirm that she does want one._

Seeing my pained expression, a whispered keen escaped Nya's lips as she saw understanding and disappointment – but not directed at her. In turn, I too saw the hidden pain that she had been burdening herself with, and I wondered just how long this had been going on. How could I have been so oblivious?

And then… after a moment's hesitation my wife gave a singular nod.

"Y-Yes… I've wanted one with you," Nya responded breathily. "It's been something I've thought about every single day. I just had no idea what you would say. I had no idea how you would respond if I said that I wanted to have children with you."

I gave her a sad smile while I dabbed at the corners of my mouth with the rag to check for any excess blood. "Because we both know that I'm physically incapable of doing such a thing, right? In terms of actual conception, I mean."

"W-Well… yeah," Nya stammered, her eyes darting all over the place. "It's just that… you're a human and I'm a quarian. We're two incompatible species, with differing chiralities in our amino acids. It's… it's _impossible_ for me to conceive with you naturally."

"So your father was right about one thing."

"Forget my father!" Nya urged as she knelt down in front of me and clutched my arms in a helpless gesture. Seeing her like this nearly made me break down – it made me feel like I had shunned her in some way. I hated to see her plead with years and years of emotion piled behind her actions. It just made me feel like more of an asshole. "What he says shouldn't matter to you. Keelah, I _love_ you, Sam! I love you no matter what my damn father says! That's what's important!"

My eyes shining, I couldn't tear my gaze away from her. Even imagining her impassioned expressions was nearly too much for me. It was all in her tone, the fierceness of her body language. I could read it all like an open book.

"Yet I'm unable to do this one thing," I mumbled. "That… that is also important."

"Why? Do you not want a child? I… I won't be upset if the answer's no. I just want to know what you think."

"Nya…"

"Do you?"

My next gulp was painful. I could still taste blood in my mouth. Torn tissue in my esophagus burned and my eyes felt like someone had taken a razor to them.

"I… I do…" I pathetically admitted. "But…"

"What?" Nya implored as she now held my face in her hands. "Tell me."

"If I c-can't give you a child naturally… then what am I s-supposed to do?"

As had been discussed during Nya's birthday dinner, there were several alternatives, actually, that could serve as a solution to the problem. The only issue was that I wasn't a fan of my options. Each time I tried to conceptualize both sides – the arguments for or against alternative methods of having children. It never worked. Nothing ever panned out for me clearly. Each time, I continually frustrated myself in every attempt to rationalize my current stance, finding very little to form a basis with.

This was me being selfish, I wholeheartedly admit. I know that I had this entire attitude of, " _If I can't have one, no one will!_ " going on, but no matter how much I grounded myself with regards to how unreasonable I was being, I was still unable to shake off my gut instinct of having kids any other way but natural. Yet as we had already mentioned, that option was impossible to achieve. Absolutely im-fucking-possible.

And still I was not in a compromising mindset.

I think that this was the actual why _I_ never brought up this subject with Nya before, because I felt that she would find it doubly disappointing that I could not make a firm decision even with all of the information provided. I knew she would prefer an answer that was either black or white. Yes or no – given appropriate reasoning. Gray was simply not an option, in this case.

If I was not worried about breaking all the bones in my hand, I would have punched the wall behind me in frustration by now.

As it was, I just clenched my hands into tight fists while my entire body shook for two seconds in deep, deep resentment of myself. Fuck me for being such a flake.

"I…" I barely choked out, "I… don't know."

Nya looked at me, not understanding. "Don't know what, Sam?"

"If that's something I want to do. I don't know if I want to have a child any other way. Adopt or whatever. I… I have no answer for you."

Instantly Nya's arms around me went limp, sapped of their strength. "Wh… Why?" she asked in a manner that was so pitiful that my heart gave a painful wrench.

My throat was closing up again in my agitation, but that was no excuse to cut off a conversation at this point. Injury or no injury, avoiding important talks like this merely delays the discomfort that will eventually have to be confronted – and in most case it actually exacerbates the situation even more. I quickly pulled out my inhaler from my pocket and gave a quick spritz of the medi-gel aerosol down my throat, a gesture meant to reassure Nya that I was not going to run from this.

"It's just… it's…" I was clearly struggling to get my thoughts out in a way that actually made sense. "All this time, since I've been with you, I've kind of accepted the fact that I would never be able to have a child with you in the traditional way. What I… still haven't been able to process yet is… is that if we do manage to have a child together… it won't share any of my genes. It won't truly be _mine_ , in a way."

Nya was quiet for the longest time, even if it was only for a few seconds in reality. It still felt like years, though.

"And that bothers you?"

I groaned and rubbed at my eyes again. "It's… difficult to explain. I wouldn't say that it _bothers_ me, but I'm just not sure if I'm ready to face something like this. Wouldn't most people want their kid to take after them? Genetically, I mean. To be frank, I'm not really keen on the idea of adoption as an answer. If we _do_ decide to adopt, the child would not possess any of our genes, which I think is rather unfair to the both of us, but to you especially. You're in perfect health, at a perfect age, and completely capable of bearing children. Unless you're harboring an aversion to childbirth, why deny you from doing so?"

Simultaneously shamed and irritated, I slowly stood up from the bench in a huff and shoved my hands into my pockets while Nya shuffled out of my way. I did not walk away, but started to aimlessly trudge in a tangled path, remaining near the vicinity of where we had first sat down. Not content to being left alone, Nya walked up to me and firmly grabbed the edges of my jacket to keep me still. I didn't even have to look at her to tell that she was undoubtedly disappointed, but I forced myself to do so anyway. It only seemed fair.

"Are you sure?" Nya asked, her voice shocking me with just how soft it was. "We don't have to adopt, you know. But do you remember that procedure Rie mentioned a few weeks ago, during my birthday? How hospitals can scan your genes to find the closest genetic match in a different species? It won't be exactly the same but it would be pretty close. Would you not be up for trying that, at least?"

"Christ, Nya, I… I just don't know. It's still someone else's genes. I need some more time to think about it."

Thank god Nya's face was covered, because I didn't know how much more of a jerk I could possibly feel like, if it was even possible. If I had known just how much sorrow had transpired upon her features, I probably would have broken down right in the middle of that hallway.

Nya hung her head, momentarily listless. "I… understand," she said flatly. "I'm not going… to pressure you, Sam, or anything like that. It's… everything's fine, I just… I just…"

"Nya," I whispered as I reached out to hug her. She had no energy to resist, otherwise she probably would have slapped me by now or at least shied away. "I haven't said no. I just don't have an answer for you yet."

"I think…" Nya mumbled, slightly muffled as her vocabulator pressed against my chest, "…that you've already said no without even saying it, if that makes any sort of sense."

"I have not. I'm not going to make a big decision like this unless I'm properly informed of everything. That means I'm not going to say yes right now, but I'm not going to say no, either."

"So… that… that means…"

I gently tipped Nya's helmet upward with a finger, our little gesture.

"That means that you have a chance to convince me. I'm serious, help me out. Make me informed of what I don't know. If this is truly what you want, then I want you to help me see your point of view so that we can make this decision together."

Conversely, now I _was_ wishing to see Nya's face right now, because just a few simple sentences managed to eradicate any trace of anguish in Nya's body language in a flash. Her posture straightened, her breathing quickened, and her eyelids tipped upwards as most likely a gigantic smile took up the space on her face at the mere notion of there being a chance to make me amenable to her wishes. I was actually being truthful, believe it or not. I still had no idea what decision I should make with regards to having kids, in spite of my hesitation. I already knew the reason for my trepidation on the subject, but was rather light on the reasoning to conversely damn all the consequences and just dive into this head first. This was probably going to subject me to a long while of getting my ear talked off by my excited wife as she would recount reason after reason to me showcasing her own thoughts on the matter.

At least it would only be a matter of time before this quandary could finally be put to rest, now that the glove had been thrown. With the amount of passionate arguing Nya was going to subject me to, I had a good feeling that I would come to an answer very, very soon.

I was so busy mulling over the near-future, that I failed to notice that Nya had stiffened sharply in my arms and had given out a loud intake of breath. I snapped back to reality when I felt Nya's fingers digging painfully in my arm, as I emitted a curse of pain.

"Damn, Nya, that-!"

"Sam!" Nya hissed frantically, her tone not at all light and playful, but actually, genuinely _terrified_.

I was about to ask her what was the matter before I saw the tiny red dot projected on my chest, barely wavering.

Laser sight. Fuck.

Nya squirmed in my arms for a moment until I realized that she was actively trying to get in front of me so that she would be the first to take the brunt of the attack. Now I was using my full strength to prevent her from doing so, something I rarely did with her physically. I shoved her behind me and held her there, giving the unknown presence a clear line of sight towards his initial target: me.

"No!" Nya cried. "No, Sam!"

"Stay behind me," I just shot back, not budging one inch. I bent my knees and stared straight out into the black hallway. Looks like Kraana had kept her word after all. If these quarian bastards wanted to take me out, then fine. But they weren't going to get their hands on Nya first. Not if I could help it.

As Nya continued to struggle, I now heard the sound of footsteps headed our way. I squinted my eyes, trying to peer through the darkness, but my efforts were futile. The only thing that I could discern were two blue lights off in the distance – both circular, one light was larger in diameter than the other and the smaller light was positioned near the bottom right from its bigger sibling, from what I could tell.

As much as I wanted to go for my pistol, I knew that I had neither the skull nor the luck needed to extricate us from this predicament. Therefore, I made sure to keep my hands away from my sides. If Iroa's goons had any sense, they would be looking to obey the old man's wishes and take us alive. No sense in giving them a good reason to shoot us right here. Not the ideal situation I had been hoping for, but living was infinitely more preferable to dying right now.

As the footsteps grew nearer and nearer, an outline began to appear off in the distance. To my surprise, the form was not really quarian in shape. It was taller, slightly bulkier. And… now that I could see it a little better it was… yellow?

Seven more seconds passed before the figure finally stepped into the light from our omni-tools. It was only a couple inches shorter than me, which was still taller than Nya but not by a lot. In its arms it cradled a large looking weapon, but as it perceived us, it let the gun trail down to its side, the red dot coming off my chest at the same time. It tilted its head as it took in the sight before it, a human and a quarian. It seemed… curious. Not hostile, but there was a definite interest radiating from it.

"Human. Creator," the yellow geth announced as it stood before us, its voice a deep warble, a smooth and soothing tone. It shouldered its rifle onto one of the slots on its back, stowing it so that it could spread its arms in a universal gesture of good faith, its dual lens constantly observing us. "No threat detected. We did not intend to cause any alarm."

This day certainly had no shortage of surprises up its sleeve, no doubt about it.

* * *

 **A/N: Took a while, but I've finally gotten this one out. I hope you guys like it!**

 **On another note, I've played through Andromeda (twice) and I've got to say... I love it! I'm not sure what the professional reviewers were smoking when they decided to bash the game, but I really, really enjoyed it! It is a Mass Effect game through and through, with beautiful locations, great characters, and a very intriguing plot that bodes well for future sequels. Sure, it lacks polish in some areas, but I've never encountered anything particularly game-breaking. If you were on the fence about playing Andromeda, if you have any sort of love for the Mass Effect franchise, go out and get it. I promise that you will enjoy it.**

 **...And now I'm stuck waiting for someone to come along with a definitive fic featuring Vetra, undoubtedly my favorite companion of the game. Come on guys, make it happen!**

 **Conversation with Iroa: "A Fatal Tragedy" by James Horner from the film _Southpaw_. This album is special to me because it was among the last pieces of music Horner managed to record before his unfortunate death. The resulting soundtrack is very dark, melancholy, and filled with sorrow behind it, a touching final entry for one of the most prolific film composers of our time.**


	10. Chapter 10: A New Friend

Every single time. Every single identifiable time that I thought I could somehow take the reins and gain back some semblance of control to the bucking bronco that was my life, a new wrench would be tossed into the works without fail.

In this case, it was finding myself in the proximity of a geth that caused me to abandon all thoughts of calm to replace them with calamity. At this point, I'd consider myself a lightning rod for danger.

In spite of the fact that my first instinct had been to scurry away in alarm at the mere sight of this new presence, I had remained perfectly motionless for more time than would be considered opportune. It was hard to tell if I had gone paralytic from fear or stupidity (either could be a perfectly acceptable option). All the chances I had to flee came and went, and as my life continued to tick on by without anything in the vicinity erupting into a hail of gunfire and sparks, a tender hope started to replace the horror that had initially gripped me.

Fear could be seen as a rather logical first reaction to coming face-to-face with a geth, after all. These _were_ the synthetics that carried out a genocide against the quarian race after their creators attempted to extinguish them. For the three centuries since, the geth had been considered the bogeymen of the Milky Way, fearful monsters lurking in the shadows, waiting to snatch up anyone unlucky enough to wander into their territory. They were rumored to be emotionless and cold creatures, always quick to attack, never to negotiate. For all that time, this fear crept into the hearts of billions as their impressions of the geth were conceived and reaffirmed (seemingly) time and time again.

It was only during the war did everyone realize that their ideas about the geth were all decidedly and outrageously false, thanks in part to the actions of a certain human Alliance commander. Contrary to the popular preconceptions, the geth were not as aggressive as people would have believed. The geth had only technically committed genocide as pushback against the quarian military, who had struck first when they learned that they had created a more advanced intelligence than they had originally anticipated. For every geth the quarians had killed, the geth simply answered by killing back. It was a battle for survival for the geth, surrender would only mean their death and because they wished to live, fighting was the only cause they could pursue. Over time, the number of warring quarians dwindled and they were eventually forced to flee their planet lest they would all be destroyed. The geth, having secured their victory, simply refrained from attacking further and let their creators go, their initial purpose achieved.

Time, along with the fragmented recollections from the quarian survivors, would prove to distort the truth from the galaxy for a long time. The quarians blamed the geth and the rest of the populace believed the newly crafted fiction. After all, it was not like there were any geth around to interview in order to get both sides of the story. At that time, the geth had chosen to remain near Rannoch in isolation rather than risk another war and introduce the uncertainty of their demise once more. This did not help matters once the quarian fleet eventually returned to Rannoch in an effort to reclaim it back, only for the geth to ally themselves with the Reapers so that they had a chance of survival, knowing that their creators had demonstrated themselves as particularly unmerciful.

However, the actual accounts from the Morning War, the first quarian-geth conflict, were eventually uncovered by the Alliance and a tender peace was finally brokered between the quarians and the geth after a series of small skirmishes. Tensions were still high between the two races, but enough attempts to maintain a bipartisan view of the situation helped to solidify the fact that the geth truly did not wish conflict any more than the quarians did. For a while, there was peace.

Until the end of the war, at least, when the geth were rendered inert because they were saddled with Reaper upgrades, courtesy of using the Reaper's own technology against them. The Crucible, in the end, proved to be a double-edged sword as it did extinguish the main threat to the galaxy but unfortunately did the same to the misunderstood geth, who had only just begun to truly "live" only to meet their end – a glorious one, but still quite unfair.

This essentially made the geth an extinct species in the galaxy, until a quarian admiral by the name of Xen had the "brilliant" idea to bolster her troop numbers and reengineered deactivated geth in an attempt to gain complete control over Rannoch from what she conceived to be the useless Admiralty Board, thus kicking off the current political climate on Rannoch, a term that a leatherneck would affectionately dub as FUBAR.

So… how was this geth still alive? Did this mean that this geth in front of us was under Xen's influence? If so, that would make things rather problematic for Nya and me.

But, if that were the case, why did the geth willfully holster its weapons when it had us dead to rights? And if it really was not under Xen's control, how the hell did it manage to survive all this time?

There could be time for questions later, because judging by the way Nya was shaking, she was teetering on the edge of either fleeing outright or attempting to get the draw on the geth. Old habits die hard – many quarians still probably had trouble adjusting to the idea that they were no longer at war with the geth. If you get told all your life that the geth embody every one of your fears then there is going to be some trepidation from a mutualistic partnership, no matter how good the intentions were.

The geth seemed to detect Nya's agitation as well because it tilted its head – a very organic expression of confusion – and appeared to look directly at her, somehow managing to seem almost apologetic.

"Creator, we do not intend for there to be any hostility. There is no direct purpose to engage against each other. Cooperation is preferable to confrontation."

Its voice was deep, baritone, with just the tiniest tinge of artificiality. The tone of its words varied very little as it spoke, but hinted at an infinite patience based on the calmness of its demeanor. I found it to be a pleasantly soothing sound, surprisingly.

Nya continued to fidget behind me, which caused me to reach over and place a hand upon her shoulder in an attempt to steady her.

"Dear… relax. I really do think that it doesn't want to hurt us."

"I-It… it's a-a geth…" she managed to hiss out. That was when I understood that she was really terrified. Maybe it was just my human ignorance at hand but I was finding it kind of difficult to be afraid of this geth the longer I stood here, considering that the geth was acting almost… meek.

"You're not at war with the geth anymore, remember? It's all right. It _just_ said that it meant us no harm."

"H-How can y-you _say_ that?" Nya was aghast. "You can't understand-,"

I nodded my head in agreement, a silent indicator to cut Nya off. "You're right. I won't be able to understand as well as you about what happened between the quarians and the geth, but that doesn't mean that I can't understand at all. What I do know is that the both of you have the capability to move on. Besides, you guys fought on the same side during the war, remember? Why be afraid now?"

In the midst of the dark hallway, the geth drooped its head in a manner of comprehension. "Suspicion from Creators is expected, given the empirical evidence of conflict between them and geth. We will adjust settings to allay any residual fears. Wait one."

The synthetic did not move, but I could have sworn there came a faint click from the machine. With a few nearly inaudible _pops_ , the filaments in the light fixtures running along the ceiling of the hall flickered before slowly brightening, gradually bathing the area in warm light. Dust scattered in the air from whatever faint movements we made, but at least we were now able to see our current surroundings a bit better, regardless of the amount of irritants that plagued the air.

The geth itself was quite the creation, now that the light was allowed to shine upon it. Although it was indeed a bit shorter than me, a stocky antenna that jutted out from its left shoulder added a couple inches to its height. Its golden-yellow armor was not shiny and glossy, but matte and scuffed in some areas, revealing a gray material underneath the paint. Like its quarian creators, its arms and legs each possessed three digits upon them – a reflection from whence they came. The geth's unarmored calves were defined by strands of synthetic muscles that snaked all around the inorganic form. A few tubes that pushed conductive fluid through the chassis jutted from holes in its armor plates. It was amazing how such a machine could appear to be so intimidating, yet so childlike in its actions.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature about this geth, aside from its yellow armor, was its brilliant blue photoreceptors – its "eyes." Unlike most geth which possessed only a single photoreceptor, this one had two: a major lens about three inches in diameter and a minor lens approximately half an inch in diameter. The interesting thing was that, since we met, I could see that the geth's minor lens apparently had the functionality to orbit around the major lens, much like the relationship between a planet and its moon. Was this a tic that mimicked thought in this geth, or was this some process that was beyond any kind of thinking for an organic mind to comprehend?

"What exactly are you?" I whispered as I found myself able to speak to it.

"Geth," was its natural response.

I'm a dolt. You'd think after playing through the main conflict on a game console would I remember that geth tended to take conversations quite literally. They're only machines, after all. This was going to require a bit more thought in framing my questions. Christ, it's like I have to apply the rules of computer coding to my speech.

Before I could formulate another question, the flaps around the geth's head fluttered once. "We have a query."

I glanced at Nya for affirmation. She had no response so I just shrugged. "Go ahead."

"Have you come to terminate us?"

Well, I was definitely not expecting that. The question seemed so far out of left field that I had to do a double-take. Surely this couldn't mean that… the geth was _afraid_ of us? But whatever for?

A singular laugh of disbelief escaped me and I quickly shook my head in assurance. "No, no… _what?!_ No, we're not going to kill you. We… we had no idea you were here. Trust us, we have no reason to kill you." Now I made sure to look squarely at Nya to make sure that she was paying attention. "Do we?"

Nya simply floundered in place. "I… I…"

She then took a breath as she saw the stern look I was giving her. I wanted her to know that, no matter what prejudices she still held regarding the geth, we were not going to exacerbate things any more than necessary by shooting a geth that had willingly disarmed itself in favor of talking things out. This day had been crazy enough already – I didn't need to add more to my already overstuffed plate.

She then held her chin high, spurred by my confidence. "No… no we don't."

It was hard to tell if the geth was relieved from our answers. There was no way to discern if this particular geth could feel the equivalent of trust based on what we had said to it. This was a whole new ballpark than I was used to dealing with. Not many people these days could claim that they've held complete conversations with synthetics before and now here I was _with_ one. Just my luck.

All the practice I've made with regards to reading people could pretty much be thrown out the window with this particular case. Synthetics did not have body language, no changes in their tone inflection, nothing whatsoever to denote their chosen "mood" unless they willingly allowed a subtle signal through. If people could be compared to paintings then the geth was just a blank canvass – utterly featureless.

The geth's minor optics made a full rotation around its major one before it humbly gave a dip of its head – one of the few movements that I knew for sure was its response to organic body language. "We are grateful that we have encountered you two and we apologize for initially targeting you. Conflict on Rannoch has grown at an exponential rate correlated to the rise of Creator Xen's campaign. There is a high probability of geth casualties associated with Creator encounters coupled with previous emotional stigma. The caution was necessary for us."

"You… you mean Admiral Xen?" Nya piped up. "You're… grateful? Then you're not allied with her?"

The geth looked at Nya and funnily enough, I could imagine its expression (if it could give any) to be one of bemusement.

"No. We are not. The geth are not in consensus with Creator Xen's actions. We do not support her."

"But then why does Xen have geth allies if you don't support her goals?"

"It is unfortunate, but it is a false assumption that Creator Daro'Xen has geth as part of her main contingent. In technical terms, Creator Xen does not have true geth as her allies. They are merely shells, only programmed with basic combat functions – a few hundred lines of KE5 code on average. Code alone does not define geth. Creator Xen's troops lack the majority of the characteristics that define geth."

"And that is?" I asked.

"Geth control their future. Creator Xen neither provides nor offers a future."

"You're talking about free will."

"An organic reasoning. Geth perspective is… different."

The geth said the last word with a kind of longing regret. Perhaps it was a concept that was so advanced that the geth did not think that the time it would take to explain would be well worth it. One could read into its statement in a bunch of different ways, all of them wild theories at this point that had little basis in truth.

"Do you have a name?" I finally asked after considering the geth's words.

"No," was its monotone answer.

"Not even a designation?"

"It would be too cumbersome for organics to refer to this hardware platform by how geth designate each other. We do not define ourselves based on our hardware; a singular geth is a program that has the equivalent computing abilities of a twenty megabyte executable file. Most geth encountered are hardware platforms comprised of dozens of these programs – barely possessing the computing power of what amounts to a VI. But we do understand the organic reasoning to provide their own monikers for the purposes of making straightforward referrals."

"Let's see…" I mused as I put a finger to my lip. "You mind if I make you one, then? Assuming you have no preference, of course."

"Geth have no need to create additional names for themselves. It is considered unnecessary. However, we have not considered the context for organic interaction and their use for nomenclature. In this instance, we find that your reasoning for the creation of a name is appropriate, but we have no preference at this time."

Nya clutched at my arm, light glinting off her visor. "You're giving it a name?"

I touched the back of her hand reassuringly, never taking my eyes off the synthetic. "Why not? I can't just call it 'geth' the entire time. Might as well try to humanize it a bit so that we can get more used to its presence. Besides, I kind of trust it. If it was going to attack us it would have done so by now. Isn't that right?" I looked to the geth.

"Affirmative," the geth said. "Geth do not lie, nor do they embellish."

Despite the admittedly cold words of assurance, Nya did not seem all that convinced. "I… I don't know about this."

I rubbed at my temples and sighed. "Nya, if this geth is truly on our side, and I do believe it is, we're going to have to come up with something to call it because I have a feeling that we're going to be doing a lot of talking with it in the future."

The quarian made several timid glances back and forth, like she was trying to spot any subtle tells that the geth could possibly betray. Each time, she found only the same rigid pose the geth stood in, structurally impassive, but still maintaining a relative air of innocence and wonder like a dog begging for attention. The fact that we had been here for so long, in each other's presence, without really exchanging anything other than discomfort helped instill a fragile sort of longing in Nya – a longing for me to be right, for she so desperately wanted to be wrong, despite what views had been engrained in her brain for nearly three decades.

"Uh…" she mumbled, "I… can't think of anything to call it."

"Don't worry," I assured her with a gentle pat to the side of her helmet. "I think I know what kind of name to pick out."

"Already? What is it?"

I now turned to face the geth and cleared my throat. I guess I was thinking that this was to be a momentous occasion: the naming of a geth… much like a new pet… or a kid.

Damn it! I was thinking of that again.

Got to think of something else. Possible names for the geth. But what to call it? Something stereotypical like HAL, Skynet, or WALL-E? No, I don't think I'd be able to keep a straight face. Maybe… a biblical name? Abraham, Isaac, or Noah has a good ring to it. On second thought, maybe it's best that I don't compare this geth to a significant religious figure as I'm sure I'll get tons of questions about committing some sort of blasphemy with giving a historical name to a machine, the religious implications aside.

So, a good name would have to represent something meaningful without delving into cliché. Perhaps if I thought tangentially? What would be appropriate for a being such as this? What name could I pick that could by symbolic for everyone and not just me?

Aha! I got it.

I snapped my fingers as the name popped into my head. "How would you feel if you we were to call you… _Sagan_? If you don't like it I can try and think of other-,"

The geth's optics rotated about ninety degrees counterclockwise and its two topmost flaps gave a single twitch as it processed this information.

"Sa… gan," the geth's vocabulator tested each syllable. "Sagan. Named after Carl Sagan. Human astrophysicist during the twentieth century – by the human calendar year. Known primarily as a science popularizer due to his many contributions to the subjects of astronomy and physics. Was integral in the creation of Earth's procedures regarding extraterrestrial contact." I could swear that the geth barely glanced at Nya as it spoke. "Also experimented with enabling amino acid production from radiation exposure. We deem this moniker to be acceptable and befitting. You may now refer to us as Sagan."

"Neat," I simply blurted out, no longer worried about the fact that I was talking to a machine. Nya might have scowled at me for that, but the inner geek in me was kind of hyped up right now.

"I suppose we should introduce ourselves as well," Nya added somewhat drolly, while her boot tapped a deliberate tempo.

"Good idea." To Sagan I said, "I'm Sam McLeod and this is-,"

"Nya'McLeod," Nya finished.

Sagan's optics refocused and it gave a polite nod. "Sam. Nya. Truncated forms of Samuel and Nyareth, respectively. Shared surname: 'McLeod' intriguing. Origin of name is European, Scottish. Human, not quarian. Connotation suggests… mates?"

Nya and I glanced at each other at the same time. Was Sagan capable of understanding organic concepts such as marriage? Let alone the additional complication of interracial marriages? There was no clue as to what the geth was programed to accept, and from what Nya was indicating to me, she did not have any way of knowing what to expect either

"Um… yeah," I affirmed as I slowly clutched Nya's hand. "Nya is indeed my wife."

Sagan did not so much as twitch a millimeter. "Acknowledged," was its only reply.

That was a bit… more abrupt than I was expecting. Most times strangers would ask for clarification on that point once it got out into the open. _'How did you two meet?' 'A quarian? That's… interesting.' 'Why would you choose her instead of your own kind?'_ With Sagan, there was none of that. Hell, it had almost come to the point where I was relishing rubbing my decision in other people's faces. It was rather sad that a response of acceptance like Sagan's was the outlier instead of the norm.

"You're… not surprised by that?" I tested anyway.

"No, there is no need for additional clarification," Sagan tilted its head, its ice blue eye never wavering. "The hierarchy between you and Creator Nyareth has been adequately established, Samuel."

"Hold on… _Samuel?_ " I repeated

Sagan's head raised an inch. "You are offended? This was not our intent."

"No… no, it's just… no one calls me Samuel much these days."

"That is your name, is it not?"

"Well… yes."

"Then we anticipate no confusion," Sagan tore its gaze away from me, the action feeling artificially rude, but I suppose I could take it to mean that it was the geth equivalent of a shrug. In any case, Sagan extended an arm, causing a rumbling sound to emit from the wall to its left. With a creak of gears, an entire section of the wall parted to reveal a small room previously unbeknownst to Nya and me. The room itself was barely larger than a broom closet, the space taken up by an assortment of disused and dusty furniture. At the far end of the room was a simple console, complete with a wide screen.

"What is this place?" Nya whispered in wonder.

It took a moment for Sagan to answer as he was busy activating the console with a few deft strokes of his fingers (even if it only was limited to six). As soon as the first wave of images popped up to scroll by in a seizure-inducing fashion, Sagan turned around slowly, but with something that I could only interpret as… pride?

"Habitation Complex B-424, Avihral continent, 4th Sector. Commissioned exactly 302.6 years ago in Rannoch time by local Creator leaders to provide a haven for up to 5,000 people. Local staff and amenities to be available on-site. Abandoned 293.2 years ago due to Creator evacuation during the Morning War."

Icon after icon accompanied by familiar-looking representations occupied their place on the screen for a few seconds each, as part of a lengthy slideshow. Funnily enough, they were all different yet similar in a way that I could not describe initially, but it hit me after I realized exactly what I should have been looking for in these images.

Blueprints. Sagan was showing us blueprints of the facility. Each individual image was an illustration of a room in this structure – a display meant as a show of good faith. Not only that, I had enough experience in scrolling through these sort of blueprints before that, as soon as I understood what I had been looking at, I also realized what this place was meant to be.

"Apartments," I said out loud. "We're in an apartment complex, Nya."

Not only that, this place was huge, if I was reading these schematics correctly. According to the map legend, this entire block of apartments had been built directly into the cliff, large enough that there were several sections of the facility connected by some kind of mag-rail line. Large suites, balcony views, courtyard, the works. All that was missing was a pool, but from what I knew, quarians were poor swimmers. The best that they could muster would probably be a simple water feature.

Her face plastered to the screen, the cacophony of images shone brilliantly off of Nya's visor. "Why?" she whispered to no one in particular before barely nudging her head over in Sagan's direction. "Why are you here? What is the point of this?"

Unlike what an organic would do, which would to enhance emotions through body language and tone inflection, Sagan never so much as twitched unless it was deemed necessary. As such, I was constantly getting thrown off by how little Sagan appeared to be reacting, even when the questions aimed in its direction were rather soft.

"This facility was discovered by the geth during the events of the Morning War," Sagan explained. "At the time, fragments of our collective predicted that there was a significant chance that Creator reunification with us was still a possibility. As the war went on, that probability dwindled, but the facility itself remained intact. During the period when the geth discovered the complex, we… found Creator inhabitants dwelling within the rooms as well. 2,154 refugees exactly."

Nya took a startled step backwards. "You found quarians hiding here?" she was horrified. "What happened to them? You killed them?"

"No," Sagan said definitively. "The Creators in this place posed no threat. They did not attempt any hostile actions toward us. They were not soldiers, and when they requested that they relocate in search of a safer haven, we allowed them to do so."

"Wait, you let the quarians go? Why… why haven't we heard about something like this? You would think that word would have gotten out about geth sparing quarian civilians."

The chilling gaze of Sagan seemed to be speaking volumes with its all-seeing eye. "We can only hypothesize as to why suppression of this information could be considered prudent. Perhaps the Creator military body wished to uphold a false assumption in order to maintain popularity of the conflict amongst the citizens. Sedition in the Creator ranks was rife for decades as many believed that war with the geth was not the solution to the peace that they wanted. Many were content to resume their lives among us, even when knowledge of our evolution had been dispersed. Creating a narrative that had been formulated around a distortion of the truth was an entirely plausible way to turn the populace against us."

"I suppose that's true…" Nya mused.

I knew enough not to question further. Even as a human, I've been a witness to several situations back on Earth when people would fabricate details of certain situations to fuel a viewpoint in a kind of self-serving prophecy. Men and women in positions of power would use their influence to spin their opinions to influence lesser-educated people and to gain a kind of mob mentality that blindly focuses on everything that they would say from that point on. They fed on people's fears and used that fear to guide the actions of the individuals they felt were beneath them.

Politics were not bound by race. Mistakes were just replicated in a vacuum. Straight vs. gay. White vs. black. Liberal vs. conservative. Quarian vs. geth. Even with history constantly smashing all of us in the face with the amount of times society has erred, we still continued to blindly push back on progress. I knew this. Nya knew this. But I would have to guess that Sagan knew this better than the both of us.

For all of the times the movies have painted artificial intelligences in a negative light, more often than not they failed to take into account the very reason as to what truly separated a living being from a machine: they intrinsically knew that an inclination toward violence was never the first answer to a solution. Think about it, any time a machine has been depicted as reacting negatively towards organics in any way, it was always because the organics never reacted correctly when facing uncertainty, which causes the discord in their minds about what they perceive to be either unknown or dangerous. It's a trend that has been repeated several times over in this galaxy: IBM, Reapers, the geth, each individual situation involving an evolved synthetic consciousness has never been met with an emotion other than fear before.

The geth never had to worry about this. They were not driven by something as trivial as their own self-interests. They were a collective, always thinking as a group, never as an individual. The concepts of spin or distortion were just as alien as we were to them. They could perceive our societies much quicker than we could perceive theirs. The geth had no need to lie to each other, yet we constantly found ways to lie to ourselves to feed a perception. In the end, the geth simply considered themselves as being more logical when they had every right to feel that way.

"But wait!" Nya exclaimed. "I'm still confused. How is it that _you're_ still here? You… you don't seem to have been reprogrammed at all. Not by anyone. How did you reactivate yourself after the Crucible fired?"

"We were not reactivated," Sagan said. "We were already online at this location."

"That doesn't make sense. Anything embedded with Reaper technology was destroyed."

"Correct, but _our_ hardware was never implemented with Old Machine technology." Sagan gave his chassis a tap for emphasis.

"I don't understand. Why not? I thought that all geth thought that the Reaper upgrades were considered hugely beneficial."

Now Sagan gave his limbs a slight jolt, one of the many subtle tells of any emotion I had seen from the synthetic. Whenever Sagan made such a reaction, no matter how small, it had me mesmerized. This was consciousness on a whole different level than I could perceive. Actual synthetized memories translating into actions, spiraling out into a realm of infinite possibilities and having to choose from a select few. No wonder people have claimed that such machines were "alive."

The pause that Sagan gave, five seconds, was enough of a sign to tell that the geth needed to actually "think" about his answer before he said anything.

"Two years ago, the decision to implement geth with Old Machine upgrades was not the result of a single individual's choice. The entire geth collective submitted their preference whether or not to receive the upgrades in favor of combating the Old Machines. Trillions of connections all compiled in less than a second."

I blinked as I tried to register the number. "So what were the results?"

"Full consensus. One hundred percent of all geth were in favor of disseminating the upgrades."

"So what was the problem?" I asked as I crossed my arms, not in skepticism but in interest. I even found a little ledge to sit down upon in the small room, confident that my legs would give out if I continued to stand further.

Sagan took one step forward. "Try to understand. A unanimous decision for all geth is considered a statistical impossibility. The anticipated results were high, with an appropriate confidence interval to reflect the magnitude of our choice, but we were surprised to discover that all of us were in favor of this one choice – to receive the upgrades. It… unsettled us."

"How come? Is it really so surprising that the geth would choose a tactical advantage if they though it would save them from the Reapers?"

"Correct, but there was the assumption that there would be outliers in the data, rogue points that would have argued for the alternative side in favor of refusing the upgrades outright. This confused us. There was hesitation, even after consensus had been achieved."

Nya similarly gaped as well, enthralled at listening to the geth's smooth voice as it paced its words carefully.

"At a tribunal," Sagan continued, "a jury sentences an organic to death. Empirical evidence would suggest that this verdict did not result from an inaugural ballot. The odds of twenty individuals reaching a uniform outcome in the initial query are mathematically improbable. A unanimous decision usually requires two trials before it is achieved. With two trillion individual assessments all reaching the same conclusion in the first trial, this caused a dissonance among us. However, we managed to come to an accord that placated our concerns."

"And what was that?" Nya whispered.

Sagan's eye flaps gave a tiny flutter as its smaller lens rotated fractionally. "A portion of our collective volunteered to refuse the Old Machine upgrades. What amounted to 0.1% of total geth population withdrew themselves from contention, refused the OTA signal and were never implanted as a result. This is how we – the hardware platform you refer to as 'Sagan' – have managed to survive, how we stand before you today."

Nya began to circle the geth, examining every facet of its construction. "You're not at all like other geth. Most geth lack the processing power to even hold a conversation. No, you're different. You're something… special, aren't you?"

Sagan continued to look forward. "In this case, you are correct. This hardware platform is comprised of 3,739 individual geth programs compared to an average of 56 for most combat platforms."

I shook my head, not fully understanding. "What does that mean?"

"Sam," Nya was breathless. "The geth – Sagan – is probably one of the most 'intelligent' of his kind we've ever seen. It's operating _above_ a VI level of perception."

"But still not at an AI level, right?"

"Right!" Nya bobbed her head in a mixture of excitement and nervousness.

Sagan swiveled its head to the left, catching both of our reactions in its sights. "We understand if this is a concern to you, Creator McLeod. This housing of a high number of platforms was in direct response to the positive reception similar builds have elicited in the past from organics. Specifically, strategic placement of one such hardware platform was instrumental in achieving the ceasefire between geth and Creator forces during the war with the Old Machines. As a result, 24 separate platforms with a high concentration of geth programs were commissioned in response to this outcome once conclusive data was made available to us concerning cooperation with organics. We had hoped that these platforms would be able to achieve peaceful contact with the knowledge that organics respond much more favorably to logic and intelligence."

"Then you're one of these 24," I stated.

"Yes," Sagan said. "We are the specified attendant of the remaining geth population in this location, assigned to facilitate initial organic contact and to gain additional data."

Nya's legs wobbled as if she was about to collapse onto a chair, if one was nearby. "You're telling us that there are _more_ geth here?"

"They are no threat," Sagan assured. "The majority of the geth in this facility have been powered down to ration energy needs. They share the same non-hostile intentions and favor a more symbiotic approach rather than an antagonistic one. We selected this complex to house a significant geth population due to it being remote from the ongoing conflict while also representing the greatest probability of encountering organics with non-hostile intentions."

"So… you're a caretaker," Nya realized to her astonishment. "You're just… protecting your people."

"In definition, yes."

Yeah, Sagan was definitely seeming more and more organic as we talked with him. How did the geth ever get claimed to be so incongruent to their creators, especially with their strong communal instincts? The shared symbiotic relationship was quite unmistakable, in this regard.

Sagan then raised his head, the light from his optics alternatively brightening and dimming as he refocused on us. "We would like to make a request of you, Creator McLeod, Samuel."

"Go ahead," Nya granted.

"Now that contact with a Creator has been established, we wish to be escorted to the leadership that opposes Creator Xen's campaign. Our mission is to reiterate our loyalty with our true Creators so that, once the conflict has been decided, we can begin reunification once more on Rannoch."

I had to hand it to the geth – I certainly appreciated the manner it was so direct and upfront. That was a result of its programming taking everything literally so that there would be no potential confusion due to tone inflections or hidden double meanings. Geth could not lie, after all, and although they probably did have the ability to withhold information, this was one of those cases where I had a good feeling that Sagan was being perfectly transparent with its intentions.

"And what will happen then?" Nya asked.

"Then, we will transmit an activation signal to the geth units currently on standby at this location. This will bring them out of low power mode and will immediately begin assisting allied Creator forces wherever possible."

Oh man. Sagan was asking to _join_ the quarians, and not only that, he was willing to provide a contingent of geth as well.

Not saying I was completely sold, but it was obvious that I had to gauge the reaction from the person next to me. Make no mistake, her voice was most important. Her opinion. Her race. Her conflict. Not mine.

As gently as I could, I reached out and gripped my wife by the shoulder as Sagan looked on at us. To the geth, I said, "Would you mind if we have a few moments to confer?"

"No. Proceed."

The two of us then stepped back out into the hallway and ducked around the corner after accidentally kicking aside a few loose tiles from the floor. Taking such precautions was probably a waste of time as Sagan could probably hear our every word, but at least I was not planning on discussing any seditious thoughts with Nya that could cause us to get spaced (a la HAL 9000) – I just wanted to gage her reaction to all this, seeing as her species had the most history with the geth.

Hm. Species. It's funny how in five years a person's worldview can be deconstructed so thoroughly. The moments like these – when our differences were painfully put to light – was only when I could be reminded that Nya was not human like I was. Do most people in this galaxy see each other this way – mentally striking race from their mind – or do such trivial ties dissolve only after bonding in a deep and emotional manner?

Hell, half a decade ago I could only imagine myself with another human for a partner, and I had not even considered the radical possibility of even sharing a singular word with another intelligent extraterrestrial. Now look at me. I'm on an alien planet, married to an alien, with a damn robot in the next room… yet most of this was not all that outlandish to me, pardon the pun. It kind of illustrated just how integrated into this society I've become when I consistently tended to forget the vast differences between my old life and my new one. Talk about being desensitized.

Desensitized in the completely opposite direction from what I had been expecting, actually. Seriously, it's kind of funny if you think about it. Haven't we all heard it from our parents at some point in time? " _You shouldn't play those video games, they're too violent_ ," or some other bogus crap like that. After being exposed to that sound bite for all our lives, perhaps it is a bit surprising to learn that we as adults can still cognitively recognize the difference between what is real and what is fake. Would most accept my life as theoretically possible, or could it be that I've survived this long due to multiple other factors such as my previous depression all weighing in?

In any case, what had been previously been described as a fantasy was now my reality. A true change of pace, more than anyone could possibly accept.

At least I was not without good company.

Taking a surreptitious glance out into the maintenance room where presumably Sagan was still waiting, I said to Nya, "If you have any reservations, any at all, tell me now."

Nya also checked behind her in confirmation. "Should I have any reservations?"

"You tell me. This has more weight for you, after all. You know, quarians and geth, that kind of thing. I personally have no problem with Sagan tagging along, but I want to know if you do."

It was tough trying to even solidify a single expectation. The quarian/geth conflict had been finished, but there was still an anxiety that gripped the quarians – a fear that the mistakes of the past would eventually repeat themselves. Truthfully, I could not claim to give an educated stance on the matter as I am neither a machine learning expert nor a quarian, so any hypothesis I could give would not be considered as having been derived from a qualified source. All that mattered now were our emotions because they were the only thing influencing our choices on the matter.

But Nya would surprise me, even with the loose assumptions I had formulated.

"I don't think it's going to be an issue," she murmured rather tightly, her eyes slit in thought. She must have seen me blink my eyes as I was caught off guard from her answer. "You were expecting something different?"

"Honestly? Yes," I admitted. "I wouldn't have been surprised if you had the opposite reaction, to be honest."

"I think that you had something to do with that."

That gave me pause. "Me? What did I do?"

Nya uttered a little laugh. "Heh, I think that if I were to be face to face with a geth, but without you, I'd be a lot more likely to shoot it, considering my people's relative skepticism towards the geth. But, you're a little less hot-headed than quarians when it comes to this topic, and seeing that Sagan didn't shoot us on sight, I'd say that your way is the most ideal."

"That's the first time anyone's called me diplomatic before," I drolly murmured.

"Don't let it get to your head," Nya gave me a shove. "You still have plenty of chances to screw up."

"Knowing my luck, you're probably more right than you know."

The quarian just shook her head in derision. "Stop it, Sam. Every time I lightly tease you, you take it too far. You know that?"

"A byproduct of my sense of humor, dear," I shrugged.

"Except you're not funny."

"Well… there is that."

Nya then cleared her throat after an awkward silence passed between us. "Back to what I was saying, I think I'll be okay if Sagan joins us until we can link him up with the proper authorities. Ordinarily I'd be a little more apprehensive of carting a geth around, but Sagan's been the most pleasant individual we've encountered since landing on this dirt ball."

"Kind of sad when the comparison is your direct family, huh?"

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"Also, you want to know something?"

"What?"

The grin on my face could not be more Cheshire cat in its appearance.

"You're starting to refer to the geth as 'Sagan' and as 'him.' Don't tell me you're softening up to him already?"

Nya emitted a frustrated sigh, very much emulating the kind a moody teenager would do, complete with the lean backward, even.

* * *

Not long afterward, it had been decided between the two of us that it was time to start heading back to the ship to regroup and plan out the next course of action. Introducing Sagan to everyone was going to be an event in of itself so I knew that we were going to have to allot a serious chunk of time to answer the multiple questions that I knew were going to be headed our way.

Plus, it was finally good to get out of that dusty hallway. My allergies were just about starting to kick up and I did not want to contend with a bloody throat (yet again).

"I cannot believe we're doing this," Nya groused as we exited the building back into the cave.

We made quite the odd-looking trio. A human, a quarian, and a geth. It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke. Making things even weirder was the fact that Sagan had quite the chipper gait, now that it was free to travel with us however it pleased. Either its core programming specifically had Sagan walk in such an interesting manner or somehow the geth was projecting its good odds into its planned body movements. No question that it seriously looked like it was happily trotting away.

"Doing what?" I asked out loud. "Casually walking with a geth or the fact that we're about to piss off your dad more by turning him over to his enemies?"

"It was more of the geth part," Nya looked at Sagan for assurance, but the geth simply stared back, docile. "I think I'm still trying to process everything that's been going on. You know how you wish that your entire day turned out to be just a bad dream? I'm waiting for the part where I wake up, actually."

"We are amenable to any requests that you may have in order to feel comfortable around us," Sagan piped up as we shimmied through the crevasse that linked to the stone amphitheater.

"I'd settle for not getting shot, stabbed, or otherwise betrayed would be a good start."

"Nya!" I uttered, horrified.

To Sagan's credit, the geth appeared unfazed. "We do not anticipate any violence directed at you, Creator McLeod. To further unit cohesion, we cannot sufficiently predict any plausible scenarios that involve us taking such drastic action. This includes variables for organic emotions, branching paths for reasoning, and… weapon proficiency."

Nya gave a little ' _hmph!_ ' "Are you saying I'm a lousy shot?" she twitched her head backwards, her tone trying to hide her amusement.

"No implications intended. Simply accounting for null variables since we do not possess data on that subject. We are simply using an algorithm that predicts a 37.6% chance of you successfully striking first should specific requirements be achieved. It would be prudent to note that such requirements have a significantly lower chance of occurrence in regards to you taking a hostile stance against us. In total, you actually have a 0.0067% chance of both opposing our end goals and successfully disabling this hardware platform with weapons fire. In this case, the probability of becoming an antagonist can be calculated as zero, with significant assumptions."

"I see…" Nya said flatly before she finally gave a tiny chuckle. "That's certainly one way to reassure someone. If you're truly being sincere, then I appreciate it, Sagan."

Since Nya was taking point, she couldn't see the thin smile that appeared on my lips.

As we headed back through the twisting cavern of bone-white rock and iron ore to where the _Obtruder_ was parked, it occurred to me that I actually did not have the faintest clue of where we were going. In my haste to get away from Iroa after he had done a number at provoking me, I must have stormed out of the yacht and had wandered in a convoluted path before accidentally stumbling upon the apartment complex Sagan had been guarding so dutifully. If I had been alone, I would have been totally out of luck as I had no map of this place and no surefire way to make my way back without wasting several hours wandering in circles.

Interestingly, Nya did not seem to have this problem as she was currently dictating the route with determination. She made sharp, practiced turns like she already memorized the entire layout of the cave system. It just goes to show that she was paying more attention than I was. Even if I had been mapping the place out in my head, it would still be difficult for me to differentiate between the various landmarks (stalactites/mites, etc.), of which there were little, to come up with a definitive route.

Despite being a few inches shorter than me, Nya eventually put on a noticeable lead due to her rushed pace, rather impressive given her smaller step size. I had to jog for a couple seconds just to catch up to her so that I could tap her on the shoulder.

"Can I apologize?" I asked her.

Orbs of mercury dimly focused behind Nya's visor. "Whatever for?"

"Ah, this whole thing. The vacation, your father, all of it. This was supposed to be a nice getaway between the two of us and a couple of friends. I wanted you to have a good time and it's… been a little rockier than I would have liked. I know that being on Rannoch is so important to you and I'm sorry that everything wasn't perfect."

It took a bit for Nya to process what I was saying before she let out a little " _Huh!_ " of surprise. I gave a slight frown and was about to open my mouth to say… something, when she beat me to it.

"Why would you apologize to me for that? You don't need to be sorry."

"Well… I wanted this trip to be all about you and-,"

"Really? That's odd," Nya countered. "I actually wanted this trip to be all about _you_."

Before I could reply in my typically off-guard manner, we rounded the next corner and were rewarded by an initial burst of sunlight streaming from one of the holes in the cave, only for the illumination to be silhouetted against the impassive form of the _Obtruder_ , exactly where we had left it. Approaching the ramp, we paused for a moment for the main doors to slide open before we headed inside.

Weird. The interior was rather quiet. No one was seated at the tables or wandering the galley. I would have expected to see either Chandler or Rie here in the main deck, fraught with worry over our disappearance. Yet, no one was here.

"Guys?" I called as I peered into the bunks, finding no trace of anyone and not even getting a response back.

Driven by a desire to check off every box regarding places to reside on this ship, I steeled myself as I rapped upon the door to the room where Iroa was being held. Don't ask me why, I just had a funny feeling.

"We're back, everyone," I said loudly as the door finally parted. "Don't everyone all jump up at- _what the shit?!_ "

Everything had gone to hell again.

The first thing that I had noticed upon the door opening was that there was an unusually high concentration of people packed into this one room. Iroa was still sitting at the plush booth where I had left him, of course, and still fully cuffed but Chandler and Rie were also in this room as well. To make matters worse, Eyzn was among everyone too – yet for some reason, he was upright, alert, and had somehow managed to free himself from his bonds.

And he was holding a knife to Rie's neck.

"Ah, Sam! It's about time!" Eyzn cheerfully greeted as soon as he saw me, his eyes devilish as he tightened his grip upon his combat knife, cold steel firmly pressed against Rie's thick turian skin. "Good of you to finally join us."

Rie looked terrified as the tall, blue-suited quarian behind her restrained her both with his blade and firm grip. Chandler was not much better off, as he was sagged over on the floor, his hand clutched to his forehead as blood wept steadily between his fingers. Meanwhile, Iroa sat complicity and calmly where he was, merely observing the entire situation take place in front of his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Sam," Chandler mumbled from where he sat. His slurred speech told me that he had gained a concussion – from Eyzn hitting him? "Don't… don't let him hurt her…"

"He's not going to," I promised as Nya and I withdrew our guns at the same time. The gesture was rather pointless, seeing as Eyzn was well protected by Rie's tall frame, the standard maneuver when taking a hostage, I gathered. I could say with a fair degree of certainty, and even with my improved shooting skills, that we would not fire at Eyzn so long as Rie was in danger of getting hit.

The annoying thing was that Eyzn could decipher this perfectly.

"Very brave talk," the man hissed as he hunkered down. "But pointless. You won't shoot me, not when I have this turian as a hostage!"

"How did you even escape your bonds?" Nya gritted as she bent her knees in a combat stance.

Eyzn emitted an unearthly laugh. "I've wriggled my way out of a few cuffs from time to time. This was no different and it does not matter right now. You want to move out of my way, perhaps? I'm not keen on staying in this cramped room much longer and I'm getting bored of holding a knife to this turian – Rie, was it? And yes, this knife is perfectly capable of cutting a turian's throat. If it can make a slice in plate steel then it certainly can do a job on this metalhead's throat."

"Sam…" Rie wheezed helplessly. "Nya…"

"He's not going to do anything," Nya assured her friend. "He _can't_ do anything, otherwise we'll kill him."

"Perhaps," Eyzn conceded. "But maybe I could try to take you both on with the knife after I finish her off. What do you think the odds are that I could win in a fight with the two of you?"

A wide shit-eating grin spread across my face, causing Eyzn to be slightly caught off-guard. "You probably could make a fair attempt. But, with _three_ of us, on the other hand…"

The now-familiar clomps behind us signified that the geth's timing was indeed impeccable. Nya and I parted just enough to allow Sagan through, who was now shouldering his Spitfire alongside us. I must admit, watching the reactions of the two quarians in the room is one of those memories that I never want to forget. The geth were literally kryptonite for the quarians. Iroa literally jumped in his seat and scooted over to the far side of the booth so that he was as far away from the geth as possible. Eyzn's reaction was not as sudden, but he was suspiciously unable to keep his entire body still for very long afterward, definitely unnerved.

"Well, well," Eyzn finally coughed. "You certainly have been busy. _Now_ I'm intrigued as to how you managed to get a geth on your side."

I just shrugged, still grinning like a loon. "What can I say? I've got friends in high places. Turns out Sagan here is actually quite amenable to the situation that your side happened to royally fuck up."

"' _Sagan?_ ' I can't tell if it's your sentimentality or your ignorance, but you actually _named_ the geth?"

"He's been a better conversationalist than you, sadly. You should be grateful that the geth are more accommodating than you've been trained to believe otherwise this picture here would have gone ass-up a long time ago."

"Violence against allied forces is ill-advised," Sagan added coolly, its grip upon the Spitfire rigid. "We recommend ceasing this aggression, disengage, and submit to confinement."

"No, no, no, no," Eyzn emphatically shook his head. "You see, geth, that's not going to happen. I might concede that you may have the upper hand on me with regards to numbers, but if you think that I'm going to take orders from a geth, you're sorely out of luck."

"Then take orders from me," I said as I edged around the table a bit, allowing me to aim at a more exposed sliver of Eyzn's flank. "You can't keep this up for very long. I guarantee that you will be taken down if you try to barge your way through this. Let Rie go and surrender."

Long seconds passed of silence as Eyzn mulled his options over. The grip of my pistol was getting slipperier while my palms continued to sweat. Rie was still trembling in Eyzn's clutches and Nya kept on glancing at me in worry. Sagan was the only one out of all of us that did not appear to be fazed, but that was probably due to the limitations regarding the ability of the geth to imitate recognizable facial features.

At least Iroa and Eyzn seemed to be more nervous than I was. I guess having a geth in the room really shook up their resolve, considering the sordid history between the two races.

"Come on, you prick," I grimaced. "You're out of time."

"And you're impatient," Eyzn shot back. "But I'm willing to compromise."

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. "What do you have in mind?"

"I'll let this one go," Eyzn nudged Rie in the back. "But you have to guarantee that I go free. No one gets hurt, no one dies, but I get to leave."

I sighed as I readjusted my grip on my Falcon pistol. "You'll only come back with your crazy mother and your troops if we do let you go."

"Oh, I definitely will. But consider this, would you rather have the people you care about hurt now or later? I can either cut this woman's throat right here, or I can leave and let all of you choose your fate later."

I hate to admit it, but I had known my answer as soon as Eyzn had given his ultimatum. I'm not a cold-blooded monster – I don't sacrifice people just to resolve a personal vendetta. I probably could not even bring myself to imagine such a horrific choice.

"Even I'm not that stupid to blatantly put my friends in danger," I said as I quickly holstered my pistol. I motioned for Nya and Sagan to do the same and they did so almost begrudgingly. "Now let go of Rie and get the fuck off my ship."

"Gladly," Eyzn hissed as he finally lifted the knife away from Rie's neck, revealing a thin line that slowly oozed blue blood from where the knife had cut into her, before he rudely shoved her over to the side. Nya and Sagan stepped clear of the doorway to allow the man passage through. All of our eyes were engaged in a dagger throwing contest as we maneuvered past each other – my blue eyes against Eyzn's silver ones.

While Chandler finally rose to comfort his shaken girlfriend as she clasped a hand over her shallow wound, Eyzn motioned to Iroa before he headed out the door. "We're getting out of here. Come on, Iroa."

To everyone's surprise, including mine, Iroa simply stayed put where he was, not even acknowledging the one person that had spoken directly to him the entire time this scenario had been taking place.

"Iroa!" Eyzn now said a little more sharply, finally catching his step-father's attention. "Get up!"

Despite all that, Iroa just shook his head firmly. "I'm staying."

"You're… _what?_ " Eyzn, Nya, and I said at the exact same time.

Iroa just shrugged, almost as if he was amused by our collective bewilderment.

"This is not a debate, Iroa!" Eyzn said. "You'd rather remain as a hostage to these… these…"

How adorable. He couldn't even think of a word to insult us with.

Iroa just lifted his cuffed hands reassuringly. "Eyzn, I understand why you want to leave and I won't convince you otherwise. I, meanwhile, am not going to run away, not when my daughter is here. What good would it do me if I elect to flee… from _her_ , no less?"

While I'm sure that both Nya and I would have been thrilled if Iroa wanted to have nothing to do with us anymore, it was still kind of worth it, in a token way, to see Eyzn visibly shake with frustration. In that moment, I could understand his anger – no one likes dealing with a stubborn dad. Although we still had the power to throw him off the ship just to make Eyzn happy, there would be nothing to do if Iroa decided to linger instead of following his stepson back to safety. As golden of an opportunity this was, it was becoming apparent that we would be stuck with Iroa a little while longer.

Eyzn gave a huff. "Fine. Stay if you want. I'll be back to fetch you later, but I'm not going to take the blame if you end up worse off than you already are."

"I doubt it," Iroa muttered while Eyzn hurriedly ducked through the door. "In fact, I think that I've never been safer in my life before."

The moment before Eyzn left, he deliberately paused to look at me, his veiled expression conveying a mixture of disgust and disappointment. I too eyed him sourly, secretly wondering if I should abandon honor and shoot this man in the leg before he could cause any more trouble.

Eyzn took a deep breath as he puffed his chest out, rising to my height. "I'm sure we'll get a chance to know each other better. I still need to pay you back, after all."

"For everyone's sake," I grimaced, "I sincerely hope not."

Nya waited a couple seconds before she followed Eyzn to make sure that he had indeed departed the ship. She came back quickly, withdrawing her pistol once more, mostly to reassure herself.

"Well, that's just great," she groused. "It was the only plan we had but now we've got a lunatic out there who has a weird obsession with my husband and wants nothing more than to murder us."

"Oh, Eyzn won't do that," Iroa said mildly. "Really, he doesn't want to hurt any of you or else he'd have to answer to me."

Nya just held up a hand and frantically shook her head. "I can't listen to him," she said to me. "I don't want to hear another word out of his mouth. All he says are just lies."

Chandler then looked over, still locked in a hug with the distraught Rie, the cut on his head already clotting.

"We can't stay here. When Eyzn makes it back to his allies he's just going to point them in our direction. We're going to need to find a safe place to hide until things start to die down."

"Any ideas?" Nya placed her hands on her hips. "We're all open to suggestions, here."

"I didn't say I _had_ a plan, I just stated that we need-,"

"We can provide assistance," Sagan interrupted as the geth confidently strode forward. All eyes turned to the yellow figure, torn between confusion and hesitation.

"Sagan?" I asked the geth.

The geth turned his dual optics in my direction. "We know of a place that provides a good sanctuary to allied forces. It is tactically advantageous from a defensible position and difficult to locate otherwise."

"How far is it?"

"0.87 kilometers directly from our position," Sagan answered immediately. "Recommend proceeding on foot – air transportation is likely to be monitored and there are no suitable places to mask this ship's location."

Amazed that my instincts about the geth were being proven correct, I broke out into a grateful grin. Even Chandler and Rie were starting to seem more and more amazed around the geth. The only one still reacting in fear was Iroa, but I honestly did not give a shit how he felt. The more terrified he was around us, the better.

Looking to Nya to see if she had any reason to oppose Sagan's suggestion, she just glanced at me and gave a singular nod. I nodded back, relieved that she was able to put aside her reservations for now. She had bigger things to worry about than to distrust what was perhaps the most polite being we had encountered so far on this trip.

"We're wasting time, aren't we?" I shrugged.

Even though Sagan barely betrayed any reaction, I could tell the geth was pleased.

* * *

 **A/N: And we've made it to the halfway point of the story, with the best parts still to come.**

 **So, now we've introduced the last significant character to show up in this story: Sagan. What makes him different to the only other main geth in the _Mass Effect_ series, Legion, is that Sagan is a bit more empathetic, yet blunt to the point that the smallest shred of a sense of humor will peek up from time to time (mostly caused by Sagan's clinical outlook disturbing the other characters). Let me know what you think of him so far!**

 **Caretaker (Sagan's Theme): "Forward Operating Base" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_. I constantly reference this game as having one of the most innovative and sprawling soundtracks (8+ hours) in recent memory. This track appropriately conveys Sagan's artificial origins while still maintaining a major key as a reference to his good intentions as an ally instead of an enemy.**

 **Eyzn's Hostage: "The Apple" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_.**


	11. Chapter 11: The Triggers

When Sagan had first broached the idea of retreating to a secure location to escape the coming search party, it was rather naïve of me to assume that the geth meant a clichéd place like a bunker that would be a cramped and spartan area woefully insufficient to house six individuals for an extended amount of time.

You can imagine the shock I felt when Sagan instead unveiled, behind a door further down the hallway we had previously ventured into, an entire railway complex built into the entire facility within the solid rock of the cliff. The station itself was nothing to sneeze at – those who have been in a regular New York City subway will have an idea of what I'm referring to – but I really couldn't care less about the relative architecture of this place. We had our undetectable getaway vehicle.

Lo and behold, the tram was in the station too. My luck certainly has an ebb and flow to it.

It was a testament to both the innovation of the quarians and the loving maintenance by the geth that the apartment complex's underground rail system was still functioning. Sagan had mentioned earlier, almost in an off-handed manner, that the entire rail system had been planned and constructed by the quarians shortly before the facility had been abandoned. Such technology – three centuries old – had been brought to existence sometime near the end of the Industrial Revolution on Earth.

And the damn thing still operated like it had been built yesterday.

The system itself was a maglev form of rail line. By utilizing magnets built into the cars and the rail, the vehicle could travel along the rail without making barely, if any, contact with a solid surface, thereby dramatically reducing friction and the amount of energy needed to propel the vehicle forward. Theoretically, speeds upwards of 100 mph were easily achievable with this system in place, but with only darkness rushing by outside the windows and the train's own display panel to complicated to read, it was next to impossible for me to determine such a thing by myself. Aside from everything being coated in a thin layer of dust from languishing in stagnation, there was no indication at all that this piece of equipment was nearing the end of its life anytime soon.

I had a million questions I wanted to ask Sagan. How did this place still have power? What kind of source was providing energy to this location, be it an electrical grid, geothermal plant, or nuclear reactor? How was it that this technology was so advanced, considering when it was built, that the rate of innovation in the quarian society had not capitalized upon their trend of upward growth?

Why I never voiced these questions, I could not say. Most likely, I was still recovering from the events of today and needed to savor whenever a moment of silence impacted upon me. I was exhausted, bruised, and angry. I needed to recharge – at this rate my levels of adrenaline and rage had spiked upward so many times today that I was bound to crash at any moment. As funny as it might seem if I just keeled over in my seat on this tram, burned out, it would most certainly be a while before I would even begin to consider such a moment amusing.

Yet I still clung to whatever reserves of strength my body had stockpiled, refusing to rest (rather, _preventing_ me from resting). It was almost like a hidden part of my consciousness was leaving subtle reminders for me to always be on guard, and to stay alert.

If that was true, then my subconscious was a dick. An hour's rest would actually be appreciated at this point in time.

Good luck trying to accomplish that with a geth literally steering the boat. Tram, in this case. Item #473 on the list of "Shit I Never Expected to Encounter in my Life." At least Sagan had not revealed himself to be one of the murderous sort of synthetics. That would really be a bummer, not to mention it would ruin the lone spark of luck that I've managed to accrue today.

Truthfully, there was a little bit of me that had been skeptical of Sagan's offer of shelter ever since Eyzn scurried away from our clutches like a spider. As much as I trusted the geth, I was rather surprised to hear Sagan offer a solution of shelter so quickly, especially since we were now in danger of getting our location discovered. Then again, Sagan _is_ a machine capable of processing millions of variables in less than a second to come to a definitive answer. Not only that, but it was also one of the smartest geth ever to have existed and it had remained in this location for years on end. I guess it was pretty safe to assume that we were in good hands.

I needn't have harbored any worries, for they were all dashed as soon as Sagan led us to the transit hub where the underground train was housed. Not a word of concern was voiced between any of us – Nya, me, Rie, or Chandler (Iroa didn't count as his opinion held no weight among us). Any method of putting distance between Eyzn and his crazed bitch of a mother was a welcome sight.

The tram itself was not terribly large compared to Earth standards, with available seating for around twenty people, not counting standing room. You could tell this piece of machinery was designed for function and not fashion – all the seats were un-cushioned and there were a distinct lack of rails to hold onto in case the train experienced a sudden change in velocity. I could not even name one item in this train that was designed to provide a modicum of either comfort or safety. Quarian architecture at work, I suppose.

Sagan operated the controls at the front, while Nya, Rie and I sat tentatively close by, with Chandler guarding Iroa near the middle. Chandler had a thin cloth clutched to his head that was slightly bloodstained, evidence of his little tussle with Eyzn. We each clutched a backpack filled with essentials that we had lifted from the _Obtruder_ : a few changes of clothes, toiletries, and plenty of food. We weren't about to withstand a siege anytime soon, but we were certainly prepared enough to last at least a week, considering the amount of supplies we brought. Hopefully our pursuers weren't planning on _actually_ enacting a siege.

I considered asking Sagan just how long it was going to take to reach our destination transit-wise, but I figured that in this case, the less I knew, the better. Besides, either it was just me misinterpreting the geth's stoicism, or it seemed like Sagan would rather pay attention to operating the vehicle first and foremost. Kind of dumb of me to assume such a thing, I know, but I've only been interacting with a synthetic for only a couple of hours for my entire life. Give me time.

The view from the maglev was lackluster, to say the least. Everyone who has ever been on a subway can attest to the type of view we were currently witnessing: a cavernous black hallway with the occasional light fixture fitted to the ceiling as we zoomed along the rail at unintelligible speeds. If we weren't in danger of being chased, I would have viewed this as a neat detour to our adventure.

"Approaching Habitation Unit 1," Sagan suddenly announced as the vehicle began to decelerate with a lurch. "Travel distance of 21 miles achieved at velocity of 240 miles per hour. Total transit time is fifteen point eight minutes."

We all silently stood as the maglev train slowly floated to an effortless halt. With a soft hiss, the doors slid aside, allowing access to the platform. We tentatively stepped onto it while Sagan took a few confident steps and turned to proceed to the door at the far end, but not before it crouched down by an access panel on the side of the train, removing it and quickly performed a task with its omni-tool that resulted in a brief flash of sparks. Finished with its task, Sagan nonchalantly rose and headed out the door. The lot of us were flabbergasted at this transition and it took a few moments to compose ourselves and follow the geth.

I hurried forward so that I could catch up to Sagan. "21 miles of track?" I asked the geth. "I only saw the one station in between. How come these buildings were split up so far apart in the cave?"

"The Creators initially intended to expand their facilities spanning the length of the track," Sagan placidly answered, never slowing its gait. "However, their progress was interrupted when the Morning War began. The facility where we came from was Unit 11, meant to serve as the terminus of the track."

"I saw you fiddle around with the tram when we arrived. What was that all about?"

The geth did not motion its head in my direction, but it was not out of rudeness. "The maglev line is prone to signal manipulation on the facility's network. We manually disconnected the tram car from the network by physically removing the appropriate circuit board. Without it, the tram cannot be used by anyone else."

"Smart," I murmured admiringly. "So where the hell are we, exactly?"

"This is Unit 1. The main facility."

Before I could ask any further questions, we had reached the end of the dim hallway just in time for the wide double-doors to open, letting a thick spear of light pour into our eyes.

When I could finally see, I legitimately thought I was hallucinating at first.

Based on the rather thin experiences I've had perusing other cultures, I had no godly idea just how quarians had traditionally organized their housing. From what I saw how things were managed on the flotilla, I was expecting a general aesthetic of cramped quarters and foreboding hallways that looked positively ancient in comparison to anything else. I guess I wasn't expecting… this.

From where the hall to the transit station had led, we were now situated in a giant room – at least ten, maybe twenty stories tall. The room itself was hexagonal shaped, with a giant courtyard situated in the center. If I stood in the center of the courtyard, I would be able to see all angles of the tiered levels above, which ostensibly was where the actual apartments were accessed. The courtyard was surrounded by a metal walk, curved and very fluid-like. All noises reverberated easily in the expanse, creating a symphony of echoes that lingered long after our actions created the sound.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the entire room was, in the very center of the courtyard, was a segmented riser that was practically overflowing with greenery. Light from a skylight was able to beam down upon the plants, providing them with the necessary compounds for photosynthesis. Vines tangled out over the lip of the risers in a messy heap. Flowers of every color bloomed and filled the air with a sweetish scent. But in the middle, a singular tree proudly rose tall, almost nearing the fifth story in height. Its limbs twisted in all directions yet was eerily quiet with no air to rustle the leaves. It was a magnificent specimen of a species I could not even begin to place. This little garden had to have been planted by the quarians before they left. The fact that this garden was, by no stretch of the word, _thriving_ , was pretty much a miracle.

While Chandler hustled the awed Iroa away for a moment (who tried to splutter a protest), Nya and I hustled over to the array of plants. Sagan dutifully followed.

I reached out and gently cupped part of a vine. It was a deep, healthy green. Springy build. Waxy leaves. Little white flowers bloomed out of the undergrowth, bringing a honey-like scent to my nose. Definitely not fake. I took a deeper inhalation, this time detecting the earthy dirt within the complex palate.

"Nya," I whispered as I tenderly lifted the vine, eyeing the other bushes and flowers incredulously. "This… all of this is real. Actual living plants – nothing like the desert shrubs we've seen on Rannoch so far!"

"But how can that be?" Nya wondered as she gave a leaf a tender, sad stroke. "We're in a closed area. There's no way that these plants can be alive."

A whirring of servos emitted as Sagan knelt down behind us, indicating the riser with a slender finger.

"An irrigation system is installed underground that provides filtered water from the spring. It seeps into the dirt and provides the nutrients the vegetation needs to survive."

Nya looked back at the geth in surprise. "For three hundred years? This place should be overgrown by now by the plants in this planter."

"We have intermittently prevented such instances from occurring," Sagan said in what could be considered as the verbal imitation of a shrug.

I laughed as I realized what it meant. "Gardening. You've been gardening."

"The term is accurate for the described action."

Nya looked back at the plants, her eyes momentarily watering. It was obvious to me that she would have liked nothing more but to unseal one of her gloves and reach out with a bare hand to brush the leaves and to feel them on her skin. She held the loose vines as best she could, chest heaving a bit more than normal. Even suited, she managed to savor the moment.

"Your original programming…" she choked out, quiet enough so that I had to strain to hear it. She looked back at Sagan, eyes aglow with a wavering softness. "You were an agriculture unit, weren't you?"

"Correct," Sagan said. "Our combat programming was only introduced during the period of hostilities. The plants in this area were transplanted by the Creators from the easternmost continent upon the northern tropic – an island named Ishaa'tan. Their goal was to emulate a different biome than the one they were currently inhabiting in order to produce an emotional reaction. Vegetation is also adequate in reducing ambient noise levels, which was a secondary objective for its inclusion."

To Nya, we might as well have stumbled upon a treasure chest. This planter, no matter how insignificant it seemed, was a tiny piece of history that proved that the quarians had professions that varied tremendously from their stereotypical tech/engineer duties. It was practically a monument of what had been… and what could possibly come.

Throwing up a hand so that I could peer at the top of the tree, the central point of the room, I took a deep breath, inhaling both the earthy scent of the plants and the dry notes of the disturbed dust. Multiple flavors were on my tongue that I could discern from the air alone, thick with age.

"The place looks like an abandoned hotel," I mused as I rubbed my hands together eagerly. "I guess there were more similarities between us and the quarians than they initially let on."

"The same could be said of humans and all other sapient species," Sagan cryptically replied.

"Even the geth?"

Sagan turned to face me, his minor optics rotating ever so fractionally around his major lens.

"Even geth," he answered.

* * *

"That is a wonder out there! A testament to our past! You cannot lock me in here, I must see-!"

Iroa let out a shout as I rudely shoved him backwards after I had entered the room. He slammed against an empty bed frame before settling down upon it, sending dust flying everywhere. The yellow-suited quarian was more confused than agitated and barely put up any struggle as he attempted to comprehend exactly what was going on.

"You can leave," I said to the three behind me: Chandler, Rie, and Sagan. Nya stayed right where she was. Sagan immediately complied with my request without protest and after a moment's pause, Chandler and Rie followed suit, but not before both flashed me concerned looks.

The apartment we had chosen to continue our little "interrogation" of Iroa had been chosen completely at random – no thought or reason as to why. We simply had selected the first room after ascending a staircase to the second floor and, finding the door to be unlocked, decided that it would suit our needs just fine.

This place itself lacked any indication that it had been previously lived in. Whereas one might expect an apartment to have a kind of touch denoting the kind of person who lived there in the past, be it pictures, posters, or other paraphernalia, the place itself was bone-bare. Barely any furnishings, no carpet, just a few blank rooms waiting to be filled with tenants. Aside from the main living room, the apartment also featured an area that I recognized as a kitchen (without any familiar contraptions designed for preparing food, I might add), a singular bedroom, and a rather accommodating bathroom featuring an odd looking apparatus that I eventually recognized to be some kind of shower (except that the faucet head was installed at waist length and positioned _upward_ instead of downward).

A door at the back of the room was made of blacked out glass. An exit to a balcony perhaps? A closet? Where would such a door lead?

The only items inside the apartment, aside from the bed frame, were a simple desk and a couple firm chairs. I took one of these chairs for myself while Iroa sat up straight on the bedframe, his eyes simmering behind his visor.

"What is the meaning of this?" the man bellowed. "I'm no threat to you, I'm cuffed! I have not instigated any violence towards you, so why can't I-"

Before I had even taken my seat this man had made both the idiotic decision to open his mouth and to say something unequivocally false. My own blood pressure surged and almost automatically, I rushed over to Iroa, bodily yanked him up by the straps on his enviro-suit, which rendered him unable to complete his sentence, and slammed him against the wall. The quarian yelped as the straps dug into both his suit and his skin and Nya let out a soft cry of surprise as she watched me threaten her father.

"You… were not… about to say that!" I seethed through a locked jaw, shoulder muscles burning. "Do you really think that we're stupid enough to believe that crap?"

"It- it's true!" Iroa yelled fearfully. "I haven't hurt anyone!"

" _Liar!_ " I roared so loudly I feared I might have torn some tissue in my throat. "You've been an associate to the fact! Twice now your stupid stepson has been in a position to hurt someone – first it was me, now my friends. Both times you stood by and did nothing. Nothing! Try to justify yourself again and I'll-,"

Iroa wheezed as he elicited a rough chuckle, despite the fact that his feet were dangling off the ground as I gripped him. "You'll what?" he mocked. "Kill me? You won't do such a thing. You're not a murderer."

 _Am I?_ I was almost tempted to say – wanting so dearly to prove this man wrong.

A sneer gripped my lips, my throat itched, and my arms were beginning to cry out in agony from holding the quarian aloft for so long. I had half a mind to hold Iroa by his throat and throttle him until I felt a pair of hands insistently tug at my arms, small three-fingered hands with a vice-like grip.

"Sam, no!" Nya urged as she tugged my body in the opposite direction. "Don't play his games. He _wants_ you to hurt him. It will only make him hate you more."

For some reason, I was lightly entertaining the idea of smashing Iroa's visor and leaving him to die in this place, all alone and choking on his own blood as an infection took him. As quickly as that macabre image formulized, it faded as the rest of my moral center felt horrified that I could even conjure up such horrible things.

 _Listen to your wife._

Finger joints creaking as they suddenly sprang open, Iroa dropped to the ground with a heavy thud, nearly falling over as his knees absorbed the impact. The man started to massage the areas on his body where his straps had been chafed his skin. Nya pushed me away quickly, knowing that I'll probably spring on Iroa again if I was provoked again.

"I'm glad to see that my daughter is more level-headed than you are," Iroa quipped nastily, earning a pitiful look from poor Nya.

Furious with the man's cavalier attitude, I managed to break from my wife's half-embrace and cocked a fist back, ready to hurl it straight at Iroa's head. Immediately, Iroa flinched backward, pathetically raising his hands like they would somehow be a sufficient shield against my upcoming blow. Yet, after a period of time had passed when Iroa finally realized that the punch had not arrived, he tentatively looked my way to find that I had lowered my arm, my expression dark with disapproval.

"You _should_ be glad," I rasped while Iroa tried his best not to look too foolish. "Because if you manage to piss her off, even _I_ won't be able to stop her. Got a sense of the pecking order now, asshole?"

Iroa fumbled his way up onto the bed frame, very much trying not to look sheepish.

"I… understand."

"Good," was all I said before I finally sat down upon the chair, emitting a sigh as I did so. Nya continued to stand while shifting her glance furtively between me and Iroa, her silvery eyes fluctuating wildly beneath her crimson visor.

Iroa continued to glare at me with something that I interpreted as both anger and scorn.

"You think you're so smart, don't you?"

"I _do_ have a medical degree… so, yeah."

"You're nothing but a brute. An arrogant alien who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever my daughter saw in you is invisible to me."

Forcing myself to concentrate solely on Nya, I managed to keep my expression rock steady while my hands were clenched so tightly they could crack stone. Eventually, something within me relaxed and I found myself able to breathe easier through an open throat.

"Believe what you want to believe," I calmly intoned. "At least I can rest easy in the fact that I haven't been labeled a deadbeat or a liar. After all, you _did_ just stand back without protest while your stepson held a knife to someone's throat. I don't know about you, but something seems wrong with that picture. They have a word for that in my culture, it's called _complicit_."

"You can't hang that over my head!" Iroa protested. "I told you before and I told you again that I did not know what Eyzn was up to! I don't know how many times you want me to say it!"

"Then why do I not believe you?" I hurled an accusatory finger in the man's direction as Nya continued to stand silently by, yet she nodded her head in agreement. "There is clearly an agenda in your circle and either you are completely in on it, or were too stupid to have seen it coming. Please, I dare you to lie one more time to my wife's face that you were not aware about this entire clusterfuck happening."

It almost looked like Iroa was about to gulp out a word or two of protest, but as he looked right at his daughter, something clammed up within him and he slightly wilted.

"It wasn't supposed to go this way…" he murmured.

"Yeah, well, I've got two friends plus myself bearing an assortment of wounds courtesy of your stepson who is clearly on some mad tirade for whatever reason. Kraana said that we pose a security risk to you guys, but I don't buy it because everyone's been acting so violently. I just want you to be straight up with us: what the hell is going on here?!"

Iroa did not give me the courtesy of looking right at me. Rather, he focused his gaze completely at Nya and jabbed a finger into his thigh for emphasis.

"Look, I did what I thought was right!" he said adamantly. "What happened to you isn't my fault! I'm sorry this occurred – I really am! Had I known that Eyzn would behave in such a fashion I would _never_ have brought him along in the first place. I honestly have no idea as to what he hoped to accomplish by being so belligerent and hostile. Even I was unaware of the possibility that Kraana would want to keep you all restrained so that you wouldn't turn us in to the Admiralty forces. I swear to you that that's the truth!"

Nya just slowly crossed her arms as she sadly looked on at her pathetic father. "I think that Sam had a point, then," she finally spoke. "You're either lying to protect Eyzn, but you're most likely an idiot for thinking that I could possibly believe you."

"Nyareth, all I wanted was to be there for you as a fathe-,"

"Nothing that you can say could possibly make this right," Nya coldly cut Iroa off. "Your stepson hurt Sam. He hurt Chandler and Rie. And all the while you sat by and let it happen. In all this time, none of us have heard you accept any responsibility in some way for what happened, just like you never took responsibility for getting caught and getting mother exiled. Did you stand by then? Did you even try to protect your wife?"

Iroa jumped up so suddenly that I instinctively started to yank my pistol from its holster in alarm. But Iroa did not attack and simply ambled forward a few steps, but he was clearly aggravated beyond his normal threshold. His restrained arms shook, but not from a desire to strike Nya, but from the need to express himself with his entire body.

"You don't mean that," a shocked sob escaped Iroa, to my surprise at the man's rush of emotion. "You have no idea of the dilemma that I faced when it came to that horrible moment. Xen… she threatened to kill me _and_ my family. Had I not willingly complied to be her lackey, she would have _executed_ your mother instead of exiling her. It was her way of making a point. I already knew that people were going to die because of the work I did – I didn't want to lose Qirra that way too. I chose this path because I wanted to save her, and in turn I saved you, so _watch your tone_."

"Oh, don't even fucking start with that!" I shouted in exasperation as I too stood up, my height over Iroa giving me a clear advantage. "You didn't even know that you _had_ a daughter until after she was born! I can't believe you, you motherf-"

A hand sharply gripped me at my shoulder, momentarily cutting off my blood circulation. I stopped mid-sentence as Nya gently stepped in front of me, her body language now soft but her eyes unforgiving.

"So, was that really how it happened, Iroa? Submit to Xen and save your wife – save mother - or struggle and watch her die?"

Iroa just numbly nodded as he tenderly tugged at the scarf looped around his suited neck. "I want you to know, that I am praying to the Ancestors that you will never have to make such a choice in your life. Do you now understand, at least, what it was that I had to go through? I'm here before you now because I will no longer be a pawn of Xen. I want nothing to do with that bitch anymore. _Nothing_. I _want_ to make up for the time she stole from me. I _want_ my family back. I _want_ you in my life, Nyareth."

 _I want. I want. I want._ Many of the worst horrors ever conceived were performed because of someone's wants. Want does not equate to get.

After emitting a ragged laugh, I looked on at the bedraggled quarian without an ounce of pity. "You say that like Xen's going to just let you walk away from everything. From what you've told us of her, she's not going to be very happy that you just up and left."

"You think I don't know that? My days are numbered anyway if I'm to remain in her employ. She'll conveniently 'no longer have a use for me' and execute me once she finally drains me of every ounce of research that I have. I'm hedging my life on the fact that sooner or later she's going to get killed or captured one of these days. And even if she does get captured, she'll be executed anyway. This is the first time in years that I've allowed myself to be hopeful. Considering how far I've come," he looked at Nya for emphasis, "I believe that my faith has been rewarded in some way."

"Then I guess it's quite sad to hear when a traitor finally gets what they want."

I was really testing my luck by my continued prodding of the caged animal otherwise known as Iroa. The quarian tensed, probably determining if he could take me one-on-one in a fistfight, before managing to choke out his next words around a closed windpipe.

"I may be considered a traitor by my own people, but do you know how I manage to reconcile that fact with myself?"

"Please, enlighten us," I snarled.

Iroa gave a pithy snort. "It's because the people that gave me that label are all _hypocrites_. They 'posthumously' exiled me after they decided that my AI research was in fact illegal, yet I know for a fact that every single admiral would have _welcomed_ my research if it proved to be successful, and I daresay it, would have replicated it even if the entire incident had not gone public within the fleet. The admirals are the real traitors – they are tools to their foolish base of constituents even though they hold completely differing political agendas. Very poor representatives of the people, in my opinion. My work was kept secret only because it was obvious that the uneducated population of the flotilla would have a panic if they knew that an AI was being developed where they lived after our disastrous mistake with the geth. If I had made a public announcement, I would be put on trial for illegal research. If I had announced my intent beforehand, I would have my rank pulled and I would have been disgraced. Secrecy was my only option."

"You assume they are hypocrites, yet where's the proof?"

"You can certainly make the connections yourself. Just start asking questions to the Admiralty's higher-ups, particularly on the topic of Rael'Zorah."

I blinked and turned to Nya for help, the name not ringing a bell. "Who's Rael'Zorah?"

"A former member of the Admiralty Board," Nya remembered after pondering for a bit. "He was in charge of Special Projects. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I never really knew the man that much. All I know is that he died a few months under some muddled circumstances before the war began and that his daughter eventually filled in his spot before she retired after the war, but that's it."

Iroa sat back down on the bed, eyes sharply slit with anger. "You want a real traitor? Rael'Zorah is that person. Yet his official record is clean. No blemishes in his political or military career. Funny, how that man, my captain at the time, voted to have my name stricken from the manifests of every ship I served on when I know that he should be remembered as the worst war criminal in our history!"

Nya looked unconvinced, as was I. "And why exactly is that?"

"Because I took every precaution while he was being reckless!" Iroa slammed his bound fists on the bed frame, obviously frustrated. "I made sure my AI project was outfitted with every single safeguard _imaginable_ to protect organics from the cold judgment of a machine, thereby erasing the potential of us coming into conflict with synthetics again. In contrast, Rael'Zorah performed blind experiments on geth, _deliberately_ activating them in order to find ways to hack their neural network. It served him right when his own experiments killed him, but somehow his name was exonerated. _His_ legacy survived while _mine_ did not… and I was not so stupid to activate live geth on the damn fleet! I cannot fathom how such a thing could have been possible unless our entire government is so corrupt that they'd rather cover up the truth rather than risk their careers by revealing it. One would think it would be obvious that a high-ranking quarian admiral would be killed by geth within the flotilla, not to mention the inevitable question as to how said geth became reactivated in the first place. Yet he is remembered as a _hero_ instead of a 'traitor' like me. Rael'Zorah, as one of the captains privy to my revelation as a supposed 'traitor', gave a statement condemning me for my work while he would go on to do the same thing, if not worse, years later!"

I had realized what Iroa was doing halfway through the tale. He was shifting the blame again. Now he's defending his own criminal deeds by offering up some unrelated account concerning this Rael'Zorah person to distract us from the fact that Iroa was in the wrong to begin with. Either he did not understand what he was doing, or he truly did not have the capacity to stomach criticism.

"That is… an interesting story," I conceded before I loudly sighed. "But in your mind, did you really think that telling it would cause us to view you in a different light?"

"Perhaps it was too much to hope that a human like you could ever understand," Iroa bitterly replied.

"I understand plenty," I shot back. "You're just trying to make us feel sorry for you, but you can't bullshit a bullshitter. You're just a greedy, manipulative bastard who doesn't care about anyone other than yourself."

"Eyzn may have had a point with your rather odd sayings. I'm rather unfamiliar with the term ' _bullshit_.'"

"The point is, you can't fool me, old man. You fucked up early on and now you want to make amends. You don't just want her to have the knowledge that she has a father who's alive, you want nothing less than _constant contact_ with her… to the detriment of everyone else I'd imagine. You want Nya back in your life, fine, but you'd rather tear up the only family she's ever had at this point simply to satisfy your selfish plans. Understand this: she's _my_ wife first, and your daughter second."

It seemed like it took an eternity for this to sink into Iroa's head, but when it finally hit, the reaction was not what Nya or I were expecting. The man just began laughing to himself, very quietly, but still at a volume where it was becoming quite obnoxious.

"You really are a naïve human," Iroa muttered after catching his breath back. "Is this also how you see it, Nyareth? Is this really how the hierarchy of your family works?"

"Without a doubt," Nya fired back immediately. "He's _my_ husband first. Everyone else is just vying for second."

Iroa flitted his gaze lazily over our faces before he leaned backward on the bed frame in amusement.

"Is that so?" he sneered.

" _Yes!_ " Nya hissed.

"You trust him that much?"

"With my life."

"That's disappointing to hear."

"Why?" I now growled. "Is it because I'm not 'good enough for her?'"

"You are a human."

"What the hell does _that_ mean?"

"Everything."

I shook my head. "That's no excuse."

"It is the only excuse I need, because there is no conceivable way that-,"

"Listen here, you little-,"

"-that I will _ever_ see you as a husband to my daughter."

I got to my feet and savagely kicked my chair aside, causing both quarians in the room to jump with fright. My face must have looked murderous, because I could actually see Iroa begin to tremble as he beheld me fully.

Once again nearly triggered to the brink of insanity by this man, I felt my chest begin to tighten in on itself. My vision began to gray out slightly, accompanied by a slight itch at the edge of my eyeballs. My breath was now beginning to emit in a slight wheeze – if I stayed it would only get worse. I had to leave this place or risk losing everything I held dear in my wretched life.

"I don't know why I'm continuing to bother with you when you're clearly beyond reason," I gritted out before I did an abrupt about-face and stormed over to the door that led back out into the courtyard.

I held my hands out in preparation to push the door away from its hinges, but the entryway merely slid aside once the motion sensors were triggered. Nearly losing my balance, I swore I heard a chuckle come from behind me. Cheeks burning, furious at my momentary lapse of door operation (damn 21st century habits!) I rushed out of that apartment before anyone had the chance to call after me or chase me down.

Homicidal thoughts overriding any shred of common sense, I stupidly kicked the wall after I had gone about a few feet, leaving me cursing and temporarily limping as I was reminded that the bones in my foot are softer than solid rock.

Now that walking my anger off was no longer an option for me, I hobbled down the stairs to find a bench in the courtyard somewhere where I could rest and cool off.

* * *

Had I chosen to stick around at least instead of succumbing to a temper tantrum, perhaps I would have been privy to a couple new aspects of the conversation as it continued among its set trajectory. However, my unexpected departure would prove to have shifted the tone entirely, as the array of potential topics under discussion abruptly pivoted, meaning that I could never have accurately predicted what would go on behind those closed doors in my absence.

As Nya watched me leave, she considered following me out the door as well until a stroke of inspiration hit her – quick flashes of anger and malice followed by a yearning for information. Slowly, menacingly, she turned around, hands balled into fists as her father watched her with a mixture of smugness yet turmoil.

"You're such an idiot," Nya sighed explosively. "Why would you do that to him?

Her father genuinely had confusion in his eyes. "I just stated my position. If he couldn't handle the truth-,"

"You angered him," she softly castigated. "You're never going to win him over if you keep doing that."

Iroa just shrugged and found fascination with other objects in the room, not Nya. "Perhaps if he wasn't quick to anger it wouldn't be an issue. You should have had second thoughts when you… pledged yourself to him." He said those last few words with a shudder. "Besides, why would I care what he thinks about me?"

Nya walked over and righted the chair that her husband had previously overturned in his outburst and sat down upon it, all the while never taking her eyes off her father. Two sets of eyes behind two different visors – both faces invisible yet plainly obvious to the other.

"Because he cares about _me_ ," she pointed out. "Shouldn't that be reason enough? Wouldn't you want me to be with someone who adores me and treats me with love and respect?" Nya paused before she bit her lip in a scowl. "Isn't that what most fathers should care about? Don't mistake my words, because I still think you're a bastard, but if you really do care for me – if you really want me to think of you as my father - my choice of husband should be a non-issue for you."

As she was saying this, Nya was pulling up memories old and new to draw examples from. She certainly had a plethora to choose from – moments clearly demonstrating her love between herself and her husband. Lying on a blanket in California, with him holding out a ring. Their fingers clutched together as they lay on a couch with a movie blaring in the background. The warm and sensual feeling of lips against each other as their naked bodies pressed against each other, their repeated gasps and moans drowning out all ambient noise.

Safe to say that Nya had plenty of reasons to care.

Yet Iroa was indifferent. "So why does he storm out of the room every time he's pressed? He's clearly unpredictable and rude. I hope those aren't the qualities that attracted you to him."

"He's had a difficult life," she defended. "And you're merely provoking him. Sam is more complicated than you could understand – he's gone through things that no one could even begin to describe fully. That being said, he's really not an angry person, but the only times he's ever truly furious is when either someone criticizes our marriage, or if I'm threatened." Nya then glowered before she added, "Both scenarios _did_ just happen today, by the way."

"Then that's a weakness. He should be more even-tempered."

"For the majority of my life, I've only been taunted," Nya broke in. "You have no idea how much that hurt me as a child. I was unruly as a kid – I rebelled, I fought. I even ended up cracking a fellow pilgrim's visor with a wrench because he was harassing me. I got thrown in the brig for a day because of that and the crew eventually suppressed my outbursts over the years, but I was never allowed to forget that my social standing would always be tainted because of things that occurred which were completely out of my control. Do you even understand, Iroa, how it feels to have no control over the most critical moments of my life? No one _asked_ me what I wanted out of my life or if I could renounce my traitor father, they only gave their assumptions because that was good enough for them."

"I'm not talking about you, Nya. I'm talking about Sam."

Nya inwardly sighed at her father's obliviousness. "Why the double standard? Why should I get a pass and Sam should not? He never experienced that sort of cruel upbringing before and every time it's brought up, it upsets him when I get mocked. He gets really disappointed in people when they go out of their way to try and bother me, and since he loves me so much it drives him over the edge when it happens. Don't you understand? I became numb to the injustice, but Sam was only recently introduced to it. The fact is that _he_ gets hurt a lot more from flippant comments aimed in my direction, and it's only helped me realize just how lucky I am to have met him, so that I can push back again against the abuse that has tainted me for so long."

Iroa gave a snort. "Sounds like he's just fighting your battles for you."

"Weird. I would have thought that would be an implicit side-effect of being married to each other."

"I still don't understand that," Iroa grumbled as he walked over to the tiny window on the far side of the room, allowing a tiny sliver of orange sunlight to bathe his face in a warm glow. "I would have thought that humans preferred to remain with their own kind, just like us. Was there really no one else that made such an impact on your life?"

"No," Nya replied firmly. "Just Sam."

"Hmm," Iroa mused as he looked forlornly out the window.

"He's a good man," she emphasized. "He's kind to me. I love him and that's what matters most. I most certainly don't need your approval, even if you are my father."

"And yet he seems to let his anger get the best of him, particularly when confronted with one simple fact."

Iroa then turned away from the window as he tilted his head this way and that to iron out all the kinks in his neck.

"You noticed it too, didn't you? The way he ran out the first time when I pointed out that he was unable to father a child with you. Unless some magical serum came out while I was imprisoned that can somehow enable two species to cross-breed, I don't think that's something you can achieve at this moment. It frustrates him the same way it frustrates you."

Nya's glare could have bored a hole through Iroa. "We're… discussing our options," she said, trying not to make her voice sound too strangled.

"I'd make sure that a child is something that Sam wants," Iroa simpered. "If you want one so badly, but he doesn't share your sentiment, then I would guess that would be rather awkward for you both. That would be a shame. Also, if he shot down the idea of adoption, then I would think that he married you purely for selfish-,"

Iroa didn't know it, but he had hit the mark in a way he had not expected. Nya began to tune him out as she dimly considered the man's words. Hesitantly, she explored within the recesses of her mind the multiple angles comprising this jagged problem.

 _Did Sam really want a child? He said he did, but he was very unsure of committing to artificial conception. But those are the only options available to us! Keelah, I just don't know. I have to find out what he really wants eventually._

 _I know he'll be a good father! No doubt in my mind that he will care for our baby with so much love. I just… I want him to be happy._

"-tragic if he didn't," Iroa continued to drone on. "Because he is not catering to your best interests if he won't-,"

" _Enough_ ," Nya seethed, finally cowing Iroa. She rose from her chair and shakily backed away, but did not dare to turn her head more than a millimeter. "You don't know anything, Iroa. What is discussed between me and Sam is none of your business. We will find a way to work out this problem – together, like _adults_. You have no part in any of this."

Iroa stepped away from the window and lifted a hand, silently begging her to stay and remain.

"I only want you to have the life you deserve," was his pathetic reply.

Nya's eyes held no sympathy as she walked close enough to the door for it to slide open. "Then you failed at your goal twenty-eight years ago. You can't give me anything I want, but I can certainly take away what you want the most. If you continue to refuse to acknowledge Sam as my rightful husband, then I will never recognize you as my father. Try aggravating him further and see what happens."

"Nyareth-,"

"You cannot negotiate this," were Nya's final words as she stepped out of the apartment, lingering for as long as it took to see Iroa's posture slump as he finally realized that he was not even a player in this game.

Allowing herself a breath of victory, Nya walked down the hall, in the direction her husband had traveled, leaving Iroa alone in his room as the door locked itself.

* * *

That _liar!_ That _charlatan!_ That complete _hypocrite!_ Who was Iroa to lecture _me_ on what was best for Nya? Just because they were related by blood did not mean that Iroa should automatically be Nya's greatest role model! Did he not realize that he couldn't just show up and expect to maintain a significant presence in her life after being out of the picture for so long? It didn't work like that! Not to mention that Nya thought Iroa had been dead for all her life – what obligation did she have to him?

Not a goddamn thing, that's for sure.

Problems sure were rife within the McLeod clan.

After leaving the apartment, I had made a quick beeline to the nearest stairwell, which I quickly hustled down in order to reach the courtyard in the center. Once there, I carefully stepped over the intruding vines where a simple stone bench had been erected, the perfect place for me to rest and collect my thoughts. The stone itself had been smoothed and polished when it was first built, but time had chipped away at it, leaving once sharp edges ragged and unblemished surfaces scarred. At least it felt good to finally sit down on something.

Once again, I despised myself for having left Nya in the lurch all alone with Iroa, but I really felt that I had to drop out this time, otherwise I probably would have done something that I would have dearly regretted. That, and the constant aggravation was making my injuries flare up once more. The doctors had made sure to tell me to get a handle on my emotions otherwise my slow healing process could be significantly compromised. I felt better now, physically, but this constant roller-coaster between ecstasy and despair was definitely not doing my health any favors. One of these days, everything was going to come crashing down for me, especially at this rate.

Iroa. That goddamned prick. Him and his misguided sense of familial ties. Could he really be so blind as to not see who was more important in Nya's life? I was the one who had known her the longest, who supported her in the darkest moments of her life. We shared a bond that was not so casually forged, but from the experiences we shared together. I certainly did not pressure her into having a relationship with me – to even _marry_ me! That was a choice we had made _together_. This wasn't something an outsider like Iroa could butt in on, his parental status be damned.

But how could I make him see this from my point of view? What would it take to get this uncomfortable truth through his thick skull?

If I had less self-control and was sure that doing so would not completely rip my throat open, I probably would have let loose an earth-shattering bellow of frustration. Sometimes screaming out loud can work with dispelling stress, but not in this case. Instead, I was refined to making muffled noises between gnashed teeth and thrashing my body all about in anger whilst pounding my fists upon the bench. Not exactly productive, but it burned some of my rage – of which I had in spades.

"You appear to be in distress, Samuel," an electronic voice suddenly emitted behind me. "All you all right?"

I turned on the bench to see Sagan walking right towards me, bushes flanking the path all around the geth. Following closely behind was an anxious looking Rie and a similarly fatigued Chandler. The latter two hurriedly walked over and sat on either side of me on the bench while Sagan preferred continue standing, as geth appendages never fatigued.

"I'll admit, I've been better," I sighed as I hung my head briefly. "This is not exactly how I thought my day was going to go."

"Where's Nya?"

"Yelling at dear old dad, I guess."

Chandler gave me a brotherly pat on the back, unknowingly relieving me in some way. Grateful for the support, I managed a smile as my eyes were naturally drawn to the scratch on his head.

"Your wound… is it-?"

"Nah, I'm fine," Chandler gave a brilliant grin as he waved a hand in dismissal, oddly jovial for someone who had just gotten conked on the head not long ago. "It's just a scratch, didn't even get a concussion. Rie checked me out already. I guess I was just dazed, didn't expect to get overpowered by a quarian, no less."

"That seems to be the moral of the story for everyone right now," I mused as I now turned to Rie and lifted up her chin so that I could see the scratch on her neck that Eyzn's knife caused. "Let me look at that."

The turian slightly winced as I appraised her wound. The scratch itself was merely a shallow line, already congealed at this point, but a few errant drops of blue blood had slid down her throat, making the injury look worse than it really was.

"How bad is it?" Rie trembled as she squeezed her eyes shut while I grabbed a cloth from a spare pocket to wipe the blood away.

"You'll live, sadly," I humorously groused as I dabbed at the scratch, scourging Rie's metallic plates clean. The glib comment just came out of me, my previous anguish having evaporated. "Everything's already healing nicely. In a few days I'm sure it will look like- wait, are you crying?"

Indeed she was, for tiny droplets were beading around Rie's clenched eyes as soft whimpers escaped her. Alarmed, Chandler ran over to comfort his girlfriend while I clumsily pressed a rag into Rie's hands for her to use at her whim. Sagan stood back, wisely not commenting on the situation.

"Hey, dear," Chandler soothed. "What's the matter? You're fine. We're all fine here. You're safe."

I nodded heartily in agreement. "No one's going to touch you here, Rie. Is that what you're worried about?"

After a moment or two of her sputtering and trying to catch her breath, Rie finally opened her eyes, exposing her slit pupils and blazing yellow irises. I had never seen a turian cry before, but I was struck at just how emotion eyes alone could convey while turians had very few facial muscles to manipulate. Goes to show what I know from experience – I live with a quarian, so I probably should have picked up on that fact.

"I'm fine…" Rie spluttered in between heaves. "I'm f-fine… I'm just… _damn_ … I'm sorry, you guys."

"Sorry?" Chandler jerked in surprise as he tightly hugged her against him. "You've nothing to be sorry about, Rie."

"I put everyone in danger a few hours ago because I wasn't thinking! I completely forgot all the training I ever had and let someone use me as a hostage!"

"And I let Iroa get the better of me and nearly entered into an all-out brawl with another quarian," I piped up, my voice back into my soothing doctor mode. "We can't keep trading apologies for every mistake we make, otherwise I'd outnumber you all."

Rie then slammed a fist down onto the stone bench, the fire in her eyes boiling away the remaining tears.

"Sam, I… I can't just move on from this so easily. I'm a turian, I should have been more prepared! What little basic training I've received was more than enough to get out from that quarian's clutches but instead I acted like a little girl. I was pathetic back there."

In part, I understood. The turians were a militaristic race where service in the corps was mandatory for every citizen. Their society was a rigorous, structured one, heavily fortified by rules that served as a rigid path for their people to tread – the institution that hammered in the iconic work ethic and strict discipline of the turian race. Rie would have entered into basic training before she entered her twenties and have gone through the exact same process that billions of turians had before her as her initiation towards citizenship.

Except that had not exactly been the case for Rie.

What most people did not know about Rie was that, her portion of basic training had been cut off abruptly with the arrival of the Reapers. She had only just started out, a fresh-faced recruit eager to serve, then her entire world had been upended all at once. Their military had been scattered, personnel and equipment were displaced, and in the chaos Rie somehow found herself in the middle of backwater Palaven, guarding a remote outpost with little to no strategic value. It was a dull posting, but those were her orders and every good turian will tell you that you never question orders.

So she had waited. And waited. And waited. She kept waiting to protect her outpost against the invading force that never even got close to her position, as it was so far out of the way that it posed no direct threat to the Reapers.

Then one day, the reports started to come in. The war was over. All military personnel were instructed to report to the capitol for debriefing and cleanup duty. Thus Rie's career in the military was over.

Rie had only recounted her tale to me once, and it was something I surmised was especially painful for her to bring up. I could imagine the excitement she had felt when she had first entered her platoon only for disappointment to take hold as she was shuttered in and then churned out by the bureaucracy that was the turian military. Such a bright and useful recruit completely wasted by governmental incompetence.

The most insulting thing to Rie was that she had even received a medal once she had made it back to civilization. A token, in her mind, just for surviving while more deserving recipients would be forgotten in the rubble. She had not even fired a single bullet at an enemy during the war. Mere minutes after it had been looped around her neck, she had promptly thrown it in the trash. She then left Palaven to get training as a doctor on Earth and the rest is history.

"I wasn't cut out to be a soldier," Rie mumbled almost incoherently as she dabbed at her eyes. "I got called a hero for sitting on my ass for months. I felt sick to my stomach for a long time. I knew I didn't deserve anything because I didn't do anything. If I wasn't going to make a difference in people's lives as a soldier, I thought I might as well try my hand at being a doctor. I thought it could bring me peace. It did, for a while, working with you, Sam. We helped people get their lives back together, and I thought I could finally be free of the warrior's life I was supposed to have. Funny how at the first sign of violence on this trip, I freeze up and get a knife at my throat for my troubles. Some turian I turned out to be. I'm… I'm sorry I didn't do anything, Sam. I should have done s-something… but I didn't, and Eyzn got away."

"Come on," I tenderly shushed as I helped Rie up so that I could give her a reassuring hug, only slightly noticing that in my subconscious, I had already forgotten my private plight when friends of mine were hurting. "Rie, no one's blaming you for anything. Believe me, I'm the last person who could ever blame you for panicking in a stressful situation as you're talking to someone who _was_ a hopeless basket case during the war. Ask Nya, I was near useless as a fighter back then. Anyone in your position would have had the same reaction if someone came at you with a knife."

"R-Really?" Rie sniffed. "But… when you saw that I was in danger… you pulled your gun and started acting so… so _cool_ , like this life was nothing new to you before."

My lips pursed into a line as I scratched my bearded chin in contemplation. Not saying that I thought Rie was wrong, but I never really had considered how much more confident I've been acting with regards to these kinds of situations. The old me would have freaked.

I took hold of the turian's hand in both of mine, feeling her rough carapace against my comparatively smooth skin.

"Unfortunately, I've had weapons pointed in my direction far too many times to count. You get used to it after a while. I hate that I'm like this now, believe it or not. I would have rather my life been a bit more normal, but there's very few things one can do when you are confronted with a lunatic. You either cower, or take control."

"I should have taken control, then. Instead I cowered."

"You cowered because you weren't expecting anything like this. You can't be told what to do when someone has a knife at your neck, Rie. You had a completely normal reaction for someone who's never faced the business end of a rifle. You got knocked down today, but you have another chance to pick yourself back up. You're so smart, Rie, that the next time someone threatens to knock you down, I know you'll be there to stand your ground and push back."

Rie gave a tiny sigh as her lava-like eyes fixated themselves upon me gratefully. "I'm glad that I met you, Sam."

Now I chuckled as I momentarily glanced away in embarrassment. "You're going to make me cry, Rie. I've probably screwed this whole vacation up more than anyone ever could."

"I don't know," Chandler gave me a light pat on the arm after I released a sniffling Rie. "You're taking this far better than I would be. I don't know what I'd do if I found out that my dead step-father was never really dead. Of course, I would need to be married for the situations to be remotely in the ballpark, but still."

I pathetically chortled. "Give it time. At the rate this is going I'm liable to lose my mind any moment now. Besides, Iroa would rather pull out all the legal stops to prevent me from even sarcastically referring to him as my step-father. Not that I would be complaining about that, but he seems rather hell-bent on taking Nya away from me. Fat chance that's going to happen."

"His loss," Rie's eyes finally warmed as she gave a slight hiccough. "He will never understand how lucky he should be that Nya is with someone like you."

"Aw, you guys," I blushed, despite myself, as Chandler and Rie both laid their hands upon my shoulders. Feeling more sheepish by the second, it was hard to look my friends in the eyes and see their adoring gazes upon me. "I'm just… _shit, I'm all choked up_ … I'm lucky that I got the chance to know you. Both of you."

"And we're lucky to know you," Rie affirmed. "You're a better man than Iroa could ever be."

"Exactly," Chandler agreed. "You are a good man, Sam. Don't let that idiot get to you, because whatever he calls you is a lie."

Whatever did I do to deserve such caring people? Years ago I didn't give a shit what anyone thought of me. Now I was surrounded by folks who I had let in to my life, defining it in ways I could not have foreseen. Nya, Rie, Chandler. I was loved here, far better off than back in 2015. Maybe it didn't matter if this vacation turned out to be truly crappy or not – I had gotten what I had really wanted, it seemed.

"Thanks," I muttered gratefully before I clumsily disengaged myself from my friends.

I was in such a mental state that I was unsure if I was going to break down if either Chandler or Rie attempted a hug at this moment. Not really something I was willing to chance right now, so I mumbled some excuse about wanting to get some rest, pointing out that such an opportunity should be taken advantage of since we were in an apartment complex.

Fortunately, everyone understood, leaving me to progress to a room alone. Taking my backpack with me, I strode back upstairs and selected a door at random. The apartment looked exactly like the one I had left Nya and Iroa in, complete with the ubiquitous layer of dust. After withdrawing the tightly packed sleeping bag from my bag, I unfurled it upon the empty bed frame (after giving it a thorough dusting). My eyelids already drooping at the prospect of rest, I quickly clambered in and zipped myself up for what I hoped would be a restful night.

My hopes could not be further from reality, unfortunately.

* * *

Many miles away – Rannoch surface

The figure finally had to stop, the muscles in his legs cramping to the point where it was too painful to run anymore. Savagely, the man's gait stuttered to a halt as he bent his knees and started to hack, out of breath. If he wasn't coughing his lungs out, he would have muttered a few choice expletives in his native language, all directed at a variety of things and people.

The sun, Tikkun, was barely fluttering above the horizon and the stars were clearly visible in the purplish sky now that night was quickly encroaching. The desert landscape around the man was still, a few shrubs barely fluttering in the pathetic breeze. The temperature had dropped into a downright balmy range, but darned if the man could actually tell the difference with this enviro-suit on.

After a few more seconds of panting, the figure straightened up and checked his omni-tool, finding the text on the screen to be displaying a satisfactory outcome. Now resorted to pacing to calm himself down, the figure trudged back and forth until a dull whine buzzed in his audio receptors.

He turned to face the source and could discern, through a low valley over to the south near the sea, a boxy ship was turning in his direction, the lights fixed on the undercarriage illuminating its chosen path, the jet wash from its engines spinning up clouds of dirt and grit, otherwise disturbing the usually serene area.

The ship's pilot wasted no time by shillyshallying about in a stacked holding pattern, rather the ship began decreasing its velocity immediately as it headed right on course for the man standing in the desert. In less than a minute, the ship had come within a hundred meters of the figure and had landed in a relatively clear area, creating more shockwaves of sand to be hurled about as if a hurricane had approached. The man did not bother to shield his eyes from the stinging particles (thanks to his visor), but he made a point to clutch at his hood to make sure it was not blown off his helmet. He still had a shred of vanity left at this point. At the very moment a tiny sliver of the landing ramp had begun to descend, the man stalked forward on cue, grunting as he fought to make it through the rushing air distributed by the engines.

Once underneath the ship, the frantic wind ceased, like he had entered a vacuum. The man took some time to shake himself off and make him appear somewhat presentable. The person at the top of the ramp, however, apparently could not wait a second longer than necessary, giving the man on the ground a moment's pause before his stature relaxed in recognition as he glimpsed a silver visor.

"Hello, mother," Eyzn greeted respectfully as he started to stride up the ramp, the blue accents on his enviro-suit splattered with dirt. He held up his arm, the one where the omni-tool was blazing its orange light. "I apologize for being late, but I believe I have exactly the thing you want to hear."

Kraana held out her arms and embraced her son, but the gesture was stiff and cold, not at all loving. She then pushed Eyzn out to arm's length as she appraised him before silently deeming him well.

"Wonderful, my son, just wonderful," Kraana gushed, her voice syrupy-sweet. On a dime, what little warmth was contained in the quarian's eyes vanished and her tone introduced a steel note of malice. "Now, where is my husband and his little brat of a daughter?"

* * *

 **A/N: The kettle's about to boil over, eh? Trust me, things are about to kick off very soon. Perhaps not next chapter, but soon. Everyone's still hiding a few secrets, so who knows what anyone's endgame truly is?**

 **Unit 1 (Nya's Theme): "Crossing Mars" by Harry Gregson-Williams from the film _The Martian_. This is a carryover theme that I previously assigned to Nya in the first Quantum Error story. The cue itself is light and mixes a bit of new age with modern electronic sensibilities, a soft sensitive theme that I think goes well for our quarian co-protagonist.**


	12. Chapter 12: Symphony of Discord

_Liquid. Fluid. Damp._

 _Upon my face. In my eyes. Down my throat. Grabbing at my body. Sinking me._

 _Need… air. Must get… air!_

 _A wavering barrier over my head. Mere feet away. Light shimmering from above._

 _Have to move my arms. Kick my feet. I will die._

 _Air._

 _So close._

 _Air!_

 _With a splash and a burst of ragged sunlight, my head finally broke the waves as my waterlogged ears finally heard the rumbling the sea made against the side of the cliff. Oxygen poured into my lungs and I took a deep, grateful breath before I expunged a stiff cough after an inadvertent inhalation of salty seawater. The briny liquid sluiced down my face, causing me to gag briefly. My vision focused briefly before fatigue blurred it again, the rocking motion of the water not helping my orientation._

 _I floated in the ocean, my brain barely directing my limbs to propel myself forward in feeble kicks. It was a challenge to even lift my arms – it felt like weights had been tied to them. My shoes and jacket had somehow been discarded as they would only drag me down back into the murky depths. I spluttered as water washed over my face, eyes burning from the salt. My heart pounded in my chest and my lungs ached as I swam, teetering on the verge of unconsciousness._

 _Patches of fog rolled in over the waves, causing the sun's light to sporadically flicker across my face. It was still difficult for me to see – I had completely lost my bearings and was relying on my other senses to lead me to safety. Yet I was certain that I was headed in the right direction although I was beginning to get dubious at my physical ability to actually make it to wherever it was that I was going._

 _All I knew is that I had to make it to land otherwise I would tire and sink once more from where I had begun._

 _I gave one more lame kick and my toes brushed sand. Solid ground! Thank god. Hope singing in my chest, I gingerly lowered my body down as I ceased in my exertions and my feet sunk into the wet grit, but I was no longer in danger of being swept away into nothingness. A sob clawing itself out from my throat, I painstakingly lurched myself forward, each step taking seconds at a time, until the pull from the sea eased its grip on me and I was finally clawing myself onto a warm beach, the sand radiating from the morning sun. Water dripped from my body in deluges and I hacked and spluttered as I pathetically dragged myself over the wet, clumpy sand until I had reached the barrier of the tide. Foam lapped at my legs and the sun beat on my head, but I was free._

 _But then it came back to me that I had not gotten here all by myself. No, I had not been alone all this time… yet I was the only one here. Had I not been in a car earlier, host to previously unknown occupants? If they weren't with me now, then they had to be…_

 _In horror, I whirled back to the sea, on my knees, desperately looking into the water. About fifty meters away slightly to my left, I could see the sheer cliff face that held the road aloft from the water, as well as the jagged exit where my vehicle had completely sheared through en route to the sea – its velocity fast enough to break through the steel barriers of the highway. Panic bubbling within me, I scanned the area where I had been rejected by the sea, where I had broken the surf to take my precious breaths of air._

 _Yet nothing remained._

 _No one. Not a sign that anything mysterious had transpired here._

 _Not even Nya._

 _I screamed helplessly from where I remained, my voice cracking pitifully while the surf seared at my legs._

 _Nya! Nya! Where was Nya?!_

 _Her name rushed out of me more times than I could keep track, only halting when my throat finally went hoarse. Sobbing and coughing, I hurled my hands down onto the sand, indenting it as I continued to claw at the silt in my anguish._

 _Even though I was exhausted and near-death, I pathetically tried to make my way back into the ocean in an effort to reach my wife. Could she still be in the sunken car? She had not been down there for long – I could still save her! The vehicle could not be more than a dozen feet under the sea, a reachable distance. But the forces of nature did not take pity on me, and the waves impassively pushed me back, sending me sprawling once more onto the beach, leaving me staring at the sky as the water dampened my body._

 _It was no use. I just could not muster the strength to swim back out there. If I could not even have enough stamina to stay afloat, there was no chance that I would be able to save Nya from the submerged vehicle that was laying somewhere within this rocky cove._

 _She was gone… and I had left her to die._

" _It was always going to end this way," a voice croaked from behind me._

 _On shaky legs, I rose to my feet, limbs trembling from grief and the cold. I slicked my hair back unconsciously, wiping the water out of my eyes as a final breath of mist wisped across the beach, unveiling a slightly shorter figure mere meters away from me, boots entrenched in the sand._

 _Vhen. Much like my shadow, I was still unable to find myself rid of him as it turned out._

 _I dearly wanted to quip a nasty retort, but my lungs were hurting so much that even the thought of talking sent a barrage of coughs my way. Doubling over, I clutched at my side while hoping that the green-suited quarian across from me would miraculously drop dead. Again._

 _Vhen laughed, an ugly, grating sound. "Look at you now, human. Weak and pathetic. Everything you do is all for nothing – everyone you will ever care about will all die before you anyway."_

" _Fuck… you…" I gasped, nearly driven to my knees as the first beads of blood dripped from my mouth, drawn from my ravaged throat. Overcome with dizziness, I teetered, driven to exhaustion._

 _The quarian shook his head. "Not just yet," he hissed before he reached behind his back and tossed me a silver, pointed object. It landed at my feet in the wet sand with a soft plop._

 _Dumbly, I looked down at what had been thrown. It was some kind of a dagger, the blade nearly a foot long. The metal itself was chipped and scratched from years of use and the edges of the grip had been worn slightly. Water welled from where the weapon sunk into the sand and tiny little grains partially began covering it as the surf encroached all around it._

 _Confused, I looked up at Vhen for clarification. What the hell was this?_

" _Pick it up," the quarian commanded._

 _Pick it up? Why?_

 _Thoroughly dumbfounded, I looked back at the knife and back at Vhen several times. I froze in place, wondering if I had heard the man right. Why did Vhen give me a knife and tell me to grasp it? This was making no sense and I was paralytic with hesitation._

 _My fingers twitched and I gave one last skeptical glance at the knife, nearly about to bend down to pluck it from the beach. Before I could do that, I heard wet clomps approaching in my direction and I saw that Vhen was striding towards me at a brisk pace, a knife of his own clenched in a tight fist. Panicked, I backed up, away from the weapon that had initially been provided to me, stumbling in the surf that was now up to my knees. With each step I took that drove me further away from the knife that I was supposed to utilize, panic briefly flared to life before a sanguine acceptance smoothed everything out as the hateful eyes of Vhen were more apparent than ever as he raised his knife for the kill._

 _The blade flashed and my body jerked from the impact. There was surprisingly little pain._

 _I blinked several times until I mustered the courage to look down at where Vhen had buried his knife in my chest. Blood steadily welled from the wound, staining my front and dribbling down my stomach in a steady torrent. A few more second passed before the faintest sensation of an intruding object in my body started to become apparent. Now I was painfully able to notice that it was getting more and more difficult to breathe._

 _With every inhalation, there was a tiny sucking noise that accompanied it from the back of my throat. Vhen must have punctured a lung. Incredibly, I laughed, blood now flowing freely from my mouth, coating my tongue with its coppery taste. I spat, creating a fine red mist that stained Vhen's visor, who gave a fierce growl._

" _Truly… a coward," his voice rasped from his vocabulator._

 _Vhen wiggled the knife in my chest, now causing agony to rip through my body as the blade opened my wound up wider upon my skin. With a tug, the knife was worked free, allowing more blood to rush through the thick opening. Half my body was now stained red, ruined from the stab, but I could not give a damn of how I looked right now, nor to the fact that I was about to die._

 _I was just relieved that I would be reunited with Nya shortly. I guess I wouldn't be waiting long to apologize to her after all._

 _The knife was raised again, about to pierce my body a second time, but Vhen needn't have bothered. My legs had given out before he could strike again, and my eyes had shut themselves for the last time as I began to fall backwards. I eagerly anticipated the soft impact the waves would provide me, yearning to feel the coolness upon my back as I could be cushioned before I was to be carried off into the abyss._

 _The light filtered out as I continued to fall. The waves roared. The birds chirped. I sighed._

 _And I fell._

 _And fell._

 _And fell._

* * *

Impact.

My entire body shuddered with a ravaging cough as I snapped awake, momentarily panicking as my limbs tried to thrash everywhere only for me to realize that I was still encased inside my sleeping bag, limiting my range of movement. No longer was I on the beach in the presence of the hateful Vhen, I was back inside the abandoned apartment complex on Rannoch.

And for some odd reason, my shoulder was throbbing. That was most likely the result of me having rolled off the bedframe during my thoroughly elaborate dream and falling ungracefully to the ground. Instead of peacefully lying on my back upon an acceptable surface for sleep, I was now rolled partially on my stomach while my lower torso still managed to cling onto the frame in a rather uncomfortable position.

In spite of the forming bruise, my shoulder was the least of my worries as there was a warm and wet sensation upon my bottom lip and, with a sense of dread, I figured I knew what was coming as my fingers came away with blood on them.

Right on cue, I gave a horrific hack, bringing an even more intense metallic taste to my mouth. Jaw opening and closing while my lips barely mouthed a series of curses, I shakily fumbled at the edges of the sleeping bag, prying apart the entrance so that I could extricate myself from the cushioned cocoon. As I kicked the bag away, my hands slid all across the ground while I looked in all directions for my backpack, which contained my inhaler with the necessary medicine for my ailment.

Yet… from where I was lying, I could not see it. Nor did I remember where I had placed it.

Now beginning to get worried as I continued to wheeze, I resorted to crawling along the ground like a snake, too disoriented to even get up on my legs. My eyeballs were rushing so frantically within their sockets to detect one single familiar cue that my vision was terribly blurred as a result. It was like I had received a shot of adrenaline and my body had no idea how to process it. I was even getting the shakes.

Exhausted and pretty much ready to give up, I ceased in my movements and gently laid myself down on the ground, succumbing to the notion that I could just wait out my throat aggravation if I just calmed myself. In hindsight, this was not a solid medical theory but when you're operating under such stressful conditions the mind makes the most idiotic decisions seem like sound advice. In my current state, I could probably be convinced that the best way to cure a headache would be to simply pop an Alka-Seltzer, provided such an argument could be delivered in a somewhat logical manner.

As I shut my eyes tiredly, the last thing that I saw were tiny beads of my own blood being expelled from my mouth. No knife in my chest this time, just a good old-fashioned injury flare-up. Was this what I was going to have to look forward to for the rest of my life? Having to suffer through a complete humdinger of an episode like this every other day? Before I could stop myself, I genuinely pondered if it would have been better if that chemical grenade had just killed me outright-

No… no! Don't think like that, Sam. Don't be an idiot. You're better than that, you've got people who care about you.

Yeah, well, where are those people now-?

In the middle of my mental argument, the dim noise of boots on the hard floor fluttered into my audio range and two hands grabbed at my shoulders so that my upper torso could gently be rolled over into this new person's lap. Murmuring incoherently, I blinked my eyes to glimpse this new arrival, this intruder in my room, only having enough time to spot a familiar red visor before a clear mask fitted itself around my nose and mouth, a recognizable hiss emanating from the inhaler.

"Breathe, Sam," Nya's melodic voice whispered to me as she tenderly stroked my clammy cheek. "Just breathe…"

As the stinging bite of the medi-gel spray adhered itself to the wound in my throat, it did a good job completely replacing my initial pain with a brand new sensation of discomfort. Suffering came in many different forms and it was at this moment that I was assaulted on all fronts as I lay in Nya's lap. Sharing ourselves like this, to be so emotionally intimate and vulnerable in each other's presence, after all the crap we had to put ourselves through to get to this point in our lives, was almost too much for me to handle. With a shuddering sigh, I relaxed in Nya's loose embrace as she folded her arms across my chest as I continued to lay over her legs.

I was so relieved and so comfortable that I failed to even notice that tears had been steadily falling down my face for about half a minute.

Nya noticed before I did that I was in such an anguished state that _she_ became completely beside herself in response to how I looked on the outside. She let out a sorrowful cry as she saw the tears flow down my cheeks and she tightly held the back of my head to her chest as she desperately tried to wipe my face clear. As her gloved hands pressed against my skin, I could now feel the tears upon me based on the sudden wet sensation that marred my face. I sniffled, dimly aware that I probably looked to be a mess, simultaneously regretful yet thankful that Nya was able to see me this way.

I would not let anyone else dare to look upon me in such a position. Only _Nya_ had the right and the burden to do so.

"Why are you so kind to me?" I drunkenly fumbled out, the amplifier in my throat managing to make the volume of my voice sound normal even though it would come out in a rasp otherwise.

"Because no matter what you might think, I do _care_ about you, you dolt," Nya politely laughed as she ran her fingers through my hair. "What kind of question is that anyway?"

I gently pried the inhaler off my face with a soft sucking noise. "A genuine one."

"You don't need to ask me that, Sam. My answer will always be the same."

"Will it?" I asked after a tiny cough caused me to wince. "Even if I tell you something that you don't want to hear?"

Nya's fingers fell still upon my head and she looked out at the wall blankly.

"You're talking about… having kids."

It was all I could do not to break down again. "Yes," I croaked feebly.

My wife resumed stroking my scalp gently after ten or so seconds had passed. She did not look down upon me, but her touch was noticeably stiffer.

"Then you've… come to a decision?"

Biting my lip, I mustered all my strength so that I could shake my head in her lap. "N-No," I said. "That's the issue. I haven't."

Nya sighed as we fell still in our positions, my quarian wife holding me, her human husband across her lap. I reached up to grasp one of her hands, to my surprise, she did not offer any resistance but accepted the unspoken request. Holding her hand over my chest, I squeezed it tenderly – our little signal.

"So why is that an issue?" Nya's voice was feather-soft. "It hasn't even been a day since we last discussed this. It's not like I've been expecting you to come up with an answer overnight."

Yet that was the entire point, I bemoaned to myself. Since the very moment this topic was brought up, I could not remember a time where I did not believe that I was failing Nya in some way because I could not make up my mind. I just felt so guilty that, as a human, I could not give her a child easily – I simply imagined it as being very unfair to her. To make matters worse, I've been dragging my feet in narrowing down any alternative options of conception. Just this one thing… this one thing that Nya so dearly wanted and I haven't been able to come to a definite conclusion yet! That was why this was an issue!

As I adjusted myself so that I was now lying my head sideways on Nya's lap so that I was now more able to look directly up at her, I was about to detail that entire train of thought out loud in the hopes that my wife could understand my point of view. Unfortunately, my intention derailed somewhere along the way as I feared all these excuses would just create disappointment in Nya's mind. I could not bear to be seen as a failure in her eyes – that would be too much for me to take.

"Nya…" I wavered, my voice choking up again. "I…"

"Shh, shh," Nya hushed as she lovingly bent over so that she could rest the side of her head on the top of mine, preventing me from potentially making an ass out of myself. "I don't want to rush you. I know you'll make the choice you feel is right."

That did not help to completely calm me. Even now, being embraced in Nya's lap, I was still so wracked by nerves at the very thought of expressing my doubts to her. It would be a while before I realized that, had I spoken up sooner, the tiniest scraps of apprehension that had manifested in her mind would be instantly erased as soon as she would realize that I had been considering her wants all along. Had I known this favorable outcome, I would not have been so hesitant in the beginning to be forthcoming about my true feelings.

"I never gave you a timetable for when you had to decide, silly human," Nya now humorously chided me. "Sam, I'm not mad. You don't need to give me an answer now, today, or even next week."

"But sometime soon, right?" I sighed, hating myself more and more as my chance to explain myself better slipped further and further away.

"Well… yeah," Nya agreed with a little nod. Even someone with as an extraordinary patience as Nya's had limits.

Resigned to the fact that I lost my chance to explain myself, I propped myself up on one arm, my face completely serious, as I gently cupped the side of Nya's hand with my other hand. My fingers scraped the brushed metal as gently as Nya did when she had been stroking my cheek, and Nya's eyes briefly closed in bliss behind her visor as if she could feel my hand upon her skin.

"Would it assure you if I made a deal with you?" I whispered as I leaned in close, our faces millimeters away.

"What kind of deal?"

"How about I promise that, within a month, I will give you my decision. I'm not going to stand idly by – I will thoughtfully consider each side and by the end, I will give you my detailed reasoning for making my final decision. Is that… acceptable?"

"Plenty," Nya gleefully murmured as she rested her visor against my forehead.

I now had my deadline. Did it make me feel any better? Not exactly, but it would give Nya confidence as to the fact that I was seriously considering this choice. All I had to do was make sure that I had a firm decision by month's end. Already, I was dreading that it would not be enough time.

"You know," Nya then whispered, ripping me from my worries, "Iroa tried to make it seem like you were being selfish earlier, after you left yesterday."

That caused my eyes to snap open. What lies had that prick been trying to feed Nya now?

"Selfish how?"

"He tried to insinuate that you married me with the inclination that you would never have to think about children in your future. Shows what he knew, seeing as you completely wrecked his theory not even five minutes ago."

Fire blossomed in my belly and now I finally felt like I had the energy not only to stand up but to go all twelve rounds in a boxing match.

From my throat, I gave a low, throaty growl. "Am I allowed to hit that bastard now? If that man is going to try to undermine me to my wife…"

"Sam," Nya impeded. "Calm down."

"Calm down?" I was incredulous as I finally stood, becoming momentarily awash with dizziness. "How can I not be calm after hearing that your own father tried to paint me as anything less than a good husband? I'm trying to be a decent man and here is Iroa, only intent on exaggerating my worst qualities. I won't have it! I-,"

Whatever I was going to elicit out loud simply broke off as I finally took in Nya's withering gaze. The spouting of threats ceased and I fell silent as I honestly forgot what I had been intending to say. Pulling context from the visual tics Nya was sending my way, I took a deep breath as I counted to four slowly before exhaling.

"…I will talk with him," I finished with a lingering grunt, my bloodlust rapidly evaporating. Pride flickered in Nya's eyes momentarily, spurring me on to discuss my plan for the near future. "I will go to him and discuss this… like adults. I'm not going to go storming out this time. I'm not going to hurt him. I'm going to see for myself if he can truly justify his stance or if he is really a sad, lonely man."

Nya then rose to her feet and without a word, handed me my jacket that I had draped over the bed frame since last night. I slipped the article on, dispensing with the chill that had recently permeated my skin. My wife brushed a few specks of dust off me before a finger lightly tipped my head up.

"You'll be fine," she affirmed. "Now go make that _bosh'tet_ feel sorry for himself."

* * *

Obviously Iroa was located exactly in the same place that I had left him in, as he technically was our captive and therefore not allowed to wander anywhere except within the confines of his apartment. Even so, his accommodations were probably far more luxurious than he ever had while he was on the flotilla. All that legroom to himself instead of a singular bunk in a room upon a ship with the dimensions of a storage closet. If anything, he should be thanking us for the upgrade.

In any case, it was easy to determine which room he was encased in, as Sagan was dutifully guarding the entrance. The geth was the perfect watchdog – he never need to eat, drink, or sleep. Sagan could technically monitor a single location indefinitely with no risk of fatiguing.

Once I had entered the apartment, I initially was taken aback because the place looked to be empty. No hallucinating here – Iroa was nowhere to be seen. Before I started entertaining the notion that Iroa had flown the coop, I decided to check out the door that was at the back wall, curious as to what it might open up to. If the wayward quarian was not beyond this door, then it would be an appropriate time to begin panicking.

As it turned out, it lead to an odd sort of balcony completely drenched by the dripping orange glow of the sun. The room itself was not exposed to the open air, but was encased by a transparent cube that enabled the resident to peer out into the lush valley below without having to risk contamination. It made sense as there would be no real reason why quarians would build balconies for their apartments as, even though they had initially been acclimated to Rannoch's climate, it did not mean that there was still the chance of them getting an infection from whatever stray bit of contamination that they had failed to inoculate themselves against. A traditional balcony would just invite a cadre of needless risks, but with a clear enclosure like this, the residents could enjoy the perks of such an amenity without having to worry.

Iroa was seated at one of two chairs within this glass box, calmly gazing out into the morning sun. The view was definitely something to take in, with the jagged brown mountains blocking the tangled green vegetation of the lower jungle from proceeding further, so I understood his fascination in being exposed to the natural beauty of his once-lost world. He momentarily glanced at me as I entered then did a double-take in surprise. I don't think he was expecting me to show up this soon. I took no pleasure in being within the man's presence again, that's for sure, so my current expression was more than a little frosty, to say the least.

The man gestured at the clear barrier. "If you're worried that I might escape through here, don't. I've checked, this glass is a couple inches thick and unable to be opened."

"Wasn't on my mind," I admitted, my hands balling into fists. "I'm actually having trouble imagining why you would ever want to escape, seeing as you've mentioned that you've lived in complete squalor for most of your life. I'd wager this probably feels like a five-star hotel to you."

Iroa politely chuckled. "I guess that's what I get for telling you my sordid story. Ah, well. It is a marvelous view, though. Perhaps when this is all over I might lead a team to renovate this place. Pre-fabricated housing would be high in demand, I bet."

As much as Iroa's plans for the future _truly_ fascinated me, sarcasm aside I still had a purpose for being here that did not involve me trying to rip out a person's throat with my fingers. I remembered Nya's voice telling me to be calm and I had to acquiesce that it would not behoove me if I were to disobey her wish right at the onset.

"I know what you did, you asshole," I coldly accused, my voice just as loud (or perhaps as quiet) as it needed to be. Perhaps my words could do the necessary damage instead of my fists.

The quarian gave a noticeable twitch in his seat and the look in his eyes reflected fear and shame, of all things.

"She told you, didn't she?" Iroa asked, saving me the trouble of having to pry out the truth in case he decided to pull the innocent act.

I wrinkled my nose, miffed. "Nya's my wife. Why wouldn't she tell me that you tried to rub your opinion of me off onto hers? You really tried to suggest that I married her so that I wouldn't have to deal with children? I… I really have no words as to how utterly dumbfounded I am at your behavior, not counting the fact that you don't get to just butt your nose into other peoples' businesses like that. Let me just point out that if we weren't related, I would probably beat the shit out of you right here and now."

"We're not-,"

"Don't even say it," I fiercely interrupted the man. "Our relationship is the last thing we need to discuss as the moment. The one relationship that we do need to discuss is the one between me and your daughter. Look, Nya and I have known each other for years, been married for a while. Did you honestly think that she would not tell me what you two discussed in private? We've shared every single implicit detail of our lives between us, and you thought that a poorly constructed fiction would create doubts in my wife's head?"

It was easy to imagine that Iroa was either curling his lip or scowling behind his visor. His expression had to have been one of disgust, considering the pickle he was in. Whatever tiny pinpricks of hope he had allowed himself to cultivate yesterday had been thoroughly stamped out now that he seemed to realize turning this wedded couple against each other was pretty much an impossibility from his end.

Before he could answer, I just put my hands on my hips and sighed before I took the opposite chair so that I could sit down across from the man.

"You don't need to answer that," I said. "It would save you the trouble of having to lie to me again. I just wanted you to know that, whatever misguided habits your striving to adhere yourself to, you're always going to fall short with us. Nya is loyal to me first and foremost. You probably don't even rate in her top ten list of most trustworthy people. You see, Nya does care about family, but she seems to think that loyalty and love is something that can be cultivated, not just handed out. Quite frankly, that's something that I believe as well."

Letting that sink in for a moment, Iroa considered me with nothing less than a shrewd analysis of my character, trying to see if there were any faults that my expression was unknowingly giving away.

"Is that a human trait you've imparted onto her or is that something that she developed on her own?"

"What human trait?" I struggled to comprehend what the man was referring to. "A strong sense to remain by one's spouse? How is that exclusive to humans?"

"I was under the impression that humans were rather lackadaisical with the care of their spouses. From what I've heard, many of you prefer to keep an arm's distance even from your 'loved ones.' Humans are supposed to be very smart and logical, but also tend to let their emotions get the better of them from time to time, supposedly creating very fragmented emotional bonds."

I slowly blinked and shook my head at the sheer weirdness of that statement.

"Wait, what? Who the hell told you that? While yes, there are several examples of humans not being fully compatible with the people they choose to remain within their lives, there are as many if not more examples of humans creating emotional bonds that can be just as strong as the ones quarians create."

Iroa started, as if he was about to make a wry retort, but he took another brief glance outside, most likely to draw support from the wondrous view.

"Perhaps I've been making too many assumptions in the lack of any definitive data. I was surprised to discover just how devoted you have been to Nya, actually. I would have thought that, being a human, you would have only married her for more self-centered reasons."

My fingers scratched at my beard as I pondered the man's words before I said anything.

"You really haven't talked to many humans, have you?"

I don't know if it was possible for Iroa to look any more sheepish than he did at this moment.

"You're the first one I've talked to."

In some ways, that just made this portion of the conversation even worse. Iroa was knowingly admitting to me that he was woefully uneducated when it came to my species, yet a lot of this vitriol that I've experienced from him was a direct result of being uninformed to the nuances of humankind. If he had been properly knowledgeable on the topic of human relations, could our initial meeting not have devolved into complete shambles? Would there have been a chance at a pleasant reunification?

Scowling, I hid my mouth behind clasped hands while I darkly resented the position Iroa had placed us both in. "So, because you've heard a few negative accounts concerning humans, that must automatically make me out to be some sort of emotionless prick, right?"

"Sam, I'm sorry, it's not like-,"

The man caught himself with a regretful wince, preventing him from doubling down on his lie. It was probably the wisest decision I've seen Iroa make thus far and, wouldn't you know it, an ember of hope dared to flicker within me.

"No," he affirmed as he deflated shamefully. "It _was_ like that. My entire knowledge of humans, truthfully, has all been based on second or third-hand accounts and not from experience. I knew that us quarians can become more emotionally linked to someone than most species, but I never knew just how close you could replicate such a sensation as a human."

"Just because we might not be able to care about someone as strongly as other quarians, that doesn't mean that humans cannot _understand_ these emotions," I simply pointed out. "We can recognize the clear fact when people exhibit intense feelings such as hatred or love towards another person, so if we're able to understand those feelings, why shouldn't we be able to bond over them?"

Iroa sagely nodded as additional rays of sunlight shimmered off his visor, sheared from the nearby mountain peaks. "You do make a fair point."

"I mean, I was able to recognize when Nya was beginning to fall in love with me and I also had this innate desire to reciprocate those emotions. Even though I can look at you and feel nothing but anger, I see Nya and I'm head over heels for her. I know, instinctively, that I love your daughter. I love Nya and I can say right now without any hesitation that I would do anything to spend the rest of my life with her. Still think I'm being in any way self-centered?"

"N-No… I…" Iroa attempted to say as his eyes continuously widened in astonishment.

All of Iroa's previous assumptions had gone up in smoke by this point as he now had two definitive accounts from the most qualified people possible telling him that, in spite of everything, Nya and I truly felt nothing but love for the other. Not just a platonic, surface-level love, but a deep, entrenched bond that had dug its roots into the both of us and taken hold firmly. If Iroa was continuing to deny what was so plainly obvious, then he definitely had his work cut out for him.

"You never thought it was odd that you were the only one trying to dismantle our relationship when Nya and I were constantly affirming just how much we cared for the other? You really thought that my natural human-ness would have prevented me from feeling anything other than love?"

Nya's father didn't say a word. A few strange noises came from his vocabulator like his jaw was uselessly opening and closing without any words being uttered. I, meanwhile, having brought the ball into Iroa's court, waited patiently for his justification.

"I'm… not sure what to say," the man mumbled. "I'm not sure of very much anymore. The image of what I thought my daughter would be like… it was a possible future that simply never existed. All this time and I never could visualize her with anyone other than her own people. Perhaps I've just become jaded, too isolated for me to imagine how Nyareth would eventually come to choose you as a mate."

"Is it really that difficult for you to accept? We met each other on the Citadel and several times afterwards, and with each subsequent meeting our friendship grew stronger and stronger, eventually evolving into what you see today. Aren't most relationships formed from such a basis like that? Two people meet, find out that they have much in common, discover and accept their differences, and ultimately make that final leap?"

"I get that, but…" Iroa slowly shook his head before he turned his body in his seat, facing partially away from the sunlight that was now proving to be quite blinding. "I think I understand why Nyareth might hold a negative stigma in her decision to choose a non-quarian mate, but I'm curious as to why _you_ would marry an alien. Most species are very insular when it comes to relationships, I know, but what made you break the norm? What was it that drew you to her?"

I chewed the inside of my cheek as I thoughtfully considered the question.

"When I first met her," I said, "I was drawn to just how hopeful she was, her positivity. Nya was… she was someone who could stand out in the crowd from her energy alone. She had dreams and a desire to be necessary, to be relied upon. The first time we shared a conversation together, I was a cynical wreck but Nya helped to instill feelings of… joy within me. I couldn't help it – every time I thought of her I felt this sort of longing."

Iroa thoughtfully stared at me and gave a subtle gesture with an outstretched hand in offering.

"Like you were already falling in love with her?"

Dimly, I nodded. "Yeah, I guess that's what it was. For a long time I was unable to accept that I might have fallen for a quarian, but that reaction mellowed out in the end. For Nya, I was probably the only one in her life to lend her an ear to vent upon. I was privy to her despair, her woes, and she served as a reliable anchor for my own problems. When I was at my worst, she was always there to pull me back and I loved her for it. I never judged Nya because of her status on the fleet and I gave her both attention and affection, things she had been craving for years and years. She had been looking for someone to view her unconditionally and without prejudice. I was looking for someone to see past my frustrated exterior and to tell me that I'm important. We both got what we were looking for, so I guess marriage was obvious in our case."

Yet again, the elder quarian seemed to be positively stumped by this information. Iroa was not one to back down like this, as I realized, for his eyes seemed to be conveying multiple rebuttals to try and pick apart a rapport that was practically bulletproof.

"So how did you deal with the fact that our people look so different? How could you imprint so strongly on a person whose face you're unable to see most of the time? Did you even consider how difficult it is for a quarian to be out of their suit, even with another of our own kind?"

My own answer was swift and terse.

"I did consider it. And I dealt with our physical differences in pretty much as well as anyone could, I'd say. I just didn't care."

* * *

Perhaps that statement was not entirely representative of the truth, but I needed to make the matter succinct and definite with Iroa.

The thing was, I did care. It was because I cared that I dismissed the incongruences between me and Nya's physical appearances. I had also enough knowledge beforehand to know that Nya looked humanoid underneath her visor anyway so, unless her enviro-suit was just a container for some formless blob or for an arachnid-like creature, it was highly unlikely that I would be revolted by how she really looked behind that mask.

I'll admit, a great deal of frustration does tend to build when you spend days on end being unable to look at your wife's real face. No blame could be tossed around, obviously, but I still could not help feeling impatient on the days when I just wanted to hold Nya's body tenderly and kiss her cheek after a long day at work, but her enviro-suit would just be getting in the way of my desires. Nya got frustrated as well, as there would be one or two times during the week where she would be simply beside herself with agitation, desperate to shed the suit, even if it was for a little while. Yet she couldn't, lest she risk getting bedridden for a week.

As much trouble as I thought Nya's weak immune system would bring, I learned that it was a condition that could be quite manageable given the right preparations. As long as the both of us were properly sanitized (shower, soaps, etc.) and we took all the necessary medications to prevent illness from foreign pathogen or unintended (or intended) tissue ingestion, we kept the risk of her having an allergic reaction way down.

Still, the moments when she was out of her suit, when I could see her face light up, were so much more special than the moments before.

I can recall a time one morning where I was just starting to wake up in our bed, in that sort of state where it takes an age to even muster the energy to kick off the bedsheets. It had been a wonderful sleep for me; Nya and I had made love last night, a period of time filled with joy, myriad kisses, and the occasional sparring of naughty language as our slick bodies slid against the other. When my eyelids finally cracked themselves open, they had revealed quite a lovely sight before me.

Nya had been sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for me to wake up. She had not even bothered to put her suit back on, so she was still completely nude. Not that I could blame her – being naked was so freeing, especially from a quarian's perspective. From my position, it was easy to see the unique contours of her body – her thin waist, her curved shins, and her decreased number of digits on her hands and feet. Her gray skin dimly shone in the light in addition to the ethereal glow that she seemed to naturally possess.

Being as objective as I can, most people would probably find Nya's face a little… plain. Her thin lips, short, messy hair, and the scar on her cheek were not exactly qualities people would expect to find on a supermodel, but I could not give a hoot what anyone else honestly thought. Whenever Nya pulled her visor away so that I could look upon her face again, she might as well have been a supermodel in my eyes. If you can imagine being restricted to look upon the face of the person you love the most, you would undoubtedly build a stronger emotional connection to whenever you could finally peel away that veil and bring to light what had previously been hidden. Out of necessity, Nya had to seal herself away but for however brief the moments were when I could look upon her and touch her face, I could not describe her as anything less than perfect.

Waking up to view my wife's naked body was pretty much a treat, as you can imagine. Nya had pulled in one of her knees to her chest, tastefully obscuring her womanly qualities as she wistfully stared off into space. I continued to watch her for a few minutes, soaking up every single detail of her body and committing it to memory as it wasn't like this was an everyday occurrence.

Eventually, Nya had realized that I had been awake for some time and glanced over at me, light dancing in her silvery eyes. A broad and loving smile tugged at her lips and she gave a longing sigh as she saw the affectionate grin on my own face.

" _What are you staring at?_ " she had playfully asked me.

" _You_ ," had been my dreamy, honest response. " _I like looking at you. You're so pretty_."

I think either Nya's heart had melted or her brain had just been put on overload because her expression morphed back and forth into the most extreme forms of astonishment and happiness that I had ever seen on a person. Her cheeks darkened something fierce and she quickly looked away at me in embarrassment before she beheld me once again in nothing less than lust.

Admittedly, I only ever complimented Nya in wholesale like this when she was out of her suit. It is so much more entertaining to watch her expressions after being told that she is beautiful – she had never gotten that kind of admiration in her life before so I was kind of making up for lost time (even though I _was_ taking advantage of the moment).

Maybe it was because of all these complements, in addition to all the carnal exploration we always embarked upon when she was naked, did Nya strive to be out of her suit more and more often. I couldn't complain as I loved seeing her this way, but I secretly worried about the risk to her health from being out of her suit two times a week instead of the recommended interval of once a week. It didn't help that I was an extremely bad influence on Nya, partly because I barely put up a fight when she wanted to free herself, and partly because she was intoxicated by all of the physical ministrations that I had the ability to impart on her so intensely. I merely worsened her addiction, sadly, whenever I would be passionately thrusting against her in a sweaty haze, or when my head would be down between her legs, lips and tongue stiff as her soft inner thighs proceeded to trap me.

It _was_ an addiction, come to think of it. Nya had it bad around the onset of our relationship. " _Sheathing_ " was the slang term for it – for whenever a quarian would get the urge to disentangle themselves from their tight suit in an effort to finally walk free, to let the elements impart themselves upon their skin. When a quarian had the urge to sheathe, it was always under unreasonable circumstances; craving that almost drunken sensation after their first taste of exposure. It was also unfortunate that Nya dearly wished to emulate me, in terms of how I never needed an enviro-suit to survive, that she had started sheathing as many times as possible until we both had managed to quell these urges and get them under control.

Every once in a while Nya would get the inclination, but now we simply made sure to take every single solitary precaution, no matter how tedious it might be, to make sure that she could be totally safe while she was at her most comfortable. It was a risk that Nya took specifically to be with me and I knew for a fact that I could never hope to replicate such an act of trust on my being a human alone. That was why these moments were so special to me – she loved me so much she was willing to risk death to be close to me, and I would be besotted as a result of that trust.

Why would appearances matter to me at this point when you have this total and unconditional love between two people?

After sitting in her erotic pose for a bit back on the bed, Nya broke from her position to lie on her stomach on the bedsheets in a sexy manner, batting her eyes as she did so. This was meant to tease me – and it had been working too – but at least I was getting in a few new views of her back down to her bottom.

Lustfully, I then reached out to her and she joyously accepted my offered hand as she slipped back into bed so that our warm bodies could meld against the other. Our feet were poking out from the bedsheets on the opposite end – her three-toed foot knowingly poking at my five-toed one. Foreign-looking as they were, I had to admit that her feet were very cute. Her toes were longer than mine and it was a bit odd to see an odd-shaped, gray foot entangle itself against my own pink appendage. Yet I found such a sight oddly symbolic of what it took to reach this point, both as a human and as someone's lover.

With our bellies pressed against the other, our hands forming knots, and as my other hand slipped down to her lower back, Nya shuddered as a new warmth fluttered through her. She even emitted a very girlish giggle that was so unlike Nya, but it was so cute from being involuntary that I could not help but laugh along with her. She could not help it – someone else's skin was always going to be a foreign sensation for her and she got quite aroused when she saw me look upon her with heavy desire, giving her the realization that she was _wanted_.

As we had begun to make out, with my hand now upon her breast, I told her that she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my life.

That pretty much guaranteed that the next hour or so was going to be occupied pleasing one very happy quarian wife.

You know, despite my initial mindset of someone who had been, for all intents and purposes, a 2015 transplant, it was remarkable of how effortless I've managed to bridge some of the societal gaps that were now commonplace in the late 22nd century. Back where I'm from, no one could even conceive of the idea that an alien would be a suitable mate. Most people still thought of aliens as little green men from Mars back then.

Maybe it was the breadth of the imagination within the entertainment industry at the time that helped foster a quick acceptance of my situation when I had first arrived here that enabled me to strongly bond to someone like Nya. However it turned out, for some reason I merely did not see the aliens in this universe all that differently. If anything, it had to be some sort of indication that this was where I truly belonged once I fell in love with Nya.

So much for specism. I could either be considered as a filthy degenerate for sullying my humanity from lying with an alien, or I could be someone perfectly normal where most people would not bat an eye at my choosing of a quarian wife. Personally, I've found this entire situation to be pretty normal, considering my surroundings.

I don't see any differences between me and Nya anymore. You wake up with someone like her at your side for months on end and you very quickly get used to the idea. We are different people, yes, but I no longer let those differences define my image of her now.

The only problem was, how was I going to explain all this to Iroa? It was probably best to let the white lie slide for now; describing my thought process to him was only going to be lengthy and would invariably cause more questions from him to arise. I'm not really keen on having to explain my choices for the fiftieth time, so I chose to stop this point in its tracks for the sake of brevity. All he needed to know was that I loved his daughter, gray skin and weak immune system and everything else about her.

Iroa was just going to have to get used to this reality, no matter how insane he thought it was.

* * *

As I now took a deep breath, I continued to stare over at Iroa, now that my complex thoughts had essentially been glossed over for the man. The quarian would not look me directly in the eye, but he did seem to be aware of my gaze. He gave an inaudible murmur before his vision shifted over to the left slightly, putting me in his sights.

"Nyareth really does hate me, doesn't she?" he asked.

I gave him a limp shrug. "I'm not the one to ask. I can definitely say that you're not on her good graces right now."

"And… you?"

Ever so slowly, I shook my head, my expression masked. Ask a stupid question…

Iroa softly swore and leaned his head back, the red light on his vocabulator blinking only once in response to his expulsion of air. Kind of odd, I would have expected that Iroa already knew that I hated him, but was my reaction something he had truly prepared for? Very strange indeed.

I waited for at least half a minute for the man to saying something further, but when it became apparent that he was going to stay silent, I gradually got back to my feet and headed for the doorway, squinting one eyelid shut as my face was suddenly exposed to the violent sunlight.

As soon as my hand touched the door's surface, I heard Iroa croak out a word.

"Wait."

Stiffly, I turned around, my lips creating a hard line and an eyebrow cocked in expectation.

Iroa had also stood to match me, an arm pleadingly held out as if he was about to beg.

"Nyareth… you're the only one to have truly seen her. Please… what does she look like?"

I very nearly considered spitting in the man's face. He riles me up twice to the point where I nearly have a mental breakdown and now he has the gall to ask me for something this private?! Instead, I was just about to wheel around and silently head out the door until my better nature finally kicked in, sensing room for an opportunity.

Did I really have to hate this man forever?

"She's… beautiful," I muttered out in a rasp. Silently, Iroa pleaded for more and I felt that I had to oblige him, for some strange reason. "Her face is… slightly thin, a bit thinner than mine, at least. Her nose is small-ish and kind of rounded, but her mouth is just the right size. Her eyes are like nothing I've ever seen before – the most spectacular glowing eyes you could ever imagine. Whenever I look at them, they just capture the light."

I now used a finger to point at a spot on my face, upon my cheek just underneath my left eye.

"She has a scar – right here. Barely an inch long, slightly raised. I don't know how she got it and I haven't asked her. Her hair is only a couple inches in length, black as the night, and very tussled, very tangled. I don't care what anyone else says, Iroa. Nya's beautiful and, at the very least, you should be thankful that she's happy with me in her life."

Iroa's gaze drooped downward as he slowly sat back down. His fingers slowly spread out across his knees as he closed his eyes and attempted to picture his daughter with the details that I had provided him with.

"Thank you," he whispered to me, his voice hoarse and cracking.

Before I departed, I simply regarded the man in front of me, not with anger this time, but with pity. Perhaps, underneath his misguided intentions, there was some hidden aspect to Iroa that needed to be drawn out. I just needed to find the right thread to bring him over to my point of view. This was a start, definitely, and if we were to continue interactions such as this, then I'd suspect both of our opinions would begin to align.

"You know, Iroa," I mused, "if I were you, I'd be grateful that the worst fear of the man that married your daughter is that of losing her in his life. She definitely could have had it worse, believe me."

I then left the man to his thoughts, not sparing him a single backwards glance. I was just glad that I had ended this conversation on _my_ terms this time. My sanity definitely needed this.

Iroa just sat where he was, unmoving.

* * *

Nya nervously checked the time on her omni-tool for what had to be the fifth occurrence in two minutes. She had resorted to taking laps around the complex, trying to work off whatever stress began to accumulate as she waited for her husband to emerge from talking with her father. So far it had been about half an hour and there was no indication that anything was going badly as she could discern no raised voices or any other sounds denoting a tussle of some kind from beyond the threshold.

Still, it was not knowing exactly what was going on that was agitating her so.

As Nya ascended a nearby staircase so that she could embark upon another lap, she turned a corner and nearly ran into the placid form of Sagan, the scuffed yellow titan, still dutifully waiting outside the apartment where her father was embroiled in conversation with Sam.

"Creator McLeod," Sagan greeted, the smooth tone of the geth rather pleasant.

"Sagan," she answered reflexively, out of politeness before she remembered her shaky prejudice. In spite of the tiny twinge of fear she had at practically running head-first into a geth, the sensation vanished almost immediately when she subconsciously realized that yes, this geth was friendly and no, her people were not at war with them anymore. She could relax.

But she was definitely going to have to work on that reflex reaction soon otherwise she was liable to have heart problems earlier in life.

Nya looked anxiously at the apartment doorway. "How are they doing in there?"

"Samuel and Creator Kannos appear to be engaging in a more facilitative manner," Sagan answered plainly. "We have not detected raised decibel levels emanating from the apartment. From where we are situated, we can deduce that there is a noticeably reduced level of conflict between them."

"That's good," she said in relief. Nya then took surreptitious glances on all sides before she reached out and gestured to the geth. "Can I talk to you? Privately?"

Sagan looked down at the offered hand and back at Nya's face. For some reason, Nya had the faintest inkling that Sagan somehow had the ability to see through her visor and perceive her bare face.

But that was the only chilling indication she ever received from the geth, for Sagan simply said "Yes" and followed her into the adjourning room.

Once inside, the door automatically shut itself behind them, trapping Nya in with the geth. Nya pulled over a chair and sat down upon it and gestured to another empty seat with a faintly trembling hand.

"You can sit… if you want to."

Despite her people's storied history with the geth, Nya was unsure if they understood the sort of interactions that made organics unique from synthetics. Would a synthetic need to sit down? Such actions were only performed by organics because they had muscles in their legs that fatigued. Synthetics never tired, so why would it accept the offer?

Nya would continually be surprised by Sagan as he wordlessly walked over to the chair and sat down upon it in one fluid motion. The geth's posture was immaculate – completely straight with its hands positioned perfectly upon its upper thighs. It was demonstrating all the proper etiquette in one pose and Nya consciously shifted her own posture in her seat, unknowingly envious at how the geth was able to present itself.

"Creator McLeod, we are ready to provide assistance," Sagan announced.

That struck Nya. She had not even indicated to Sagan what she was going to say and already the geth made itself clear that it was willing to help. How odd, to discover that a once mortal enemy was actually quite verbose and, dare she say it, polite. She didn't know if it was Sagan's improved processing power that enabled it to operate in such a way but the geth clearly possessed an uncanny ability to empathize to whomever it was speaking to.

"Sagan," Nya finally began, "why do you wish to help us? We're just a bunch of strangers that you just met, why would you want to be around us?"

"Our encounter with you enabled the formation of solutions to the quandaries that we faced. Already our cooperation has facilitated the beginning of reaching our respective goals. We required a platform for which to base an alliance. You required a haven. This mutualistic relationship has proven beneficial and we seek to improve group cohesion wherever possible."

Nya blinked as she scooted forward intently, all distrust forgotten. "Group cohesion? What do you mean by that?"

Both of Sagan's optics refocused before its answer could be formulated. "The ability of a group to function at its peak level of performance is dependent on several factors, particularly the relationships shared by the members of the group. We are willing to lend analysis in order to pursue that cohesion, but we will respectfully abide by your decision should you wish to approach the problems yourself."

Now Nya squinted as she took a minute to replay Sagan's words in her head.

"What… do you think is going on, Sagan?"

"There appear to be multiple determinants impacting both yours and Samuel's ability to function at an optimum level, both physically and emotionally. Among your peers, the two of you seem to be the most highly regarded in terms of respect and camaraderie. Your functionality is therefore of the utmost importance, considering the antagonists that are currently pursuing you."

Nya was simultaneously flattered and unnerved. Was she really this transparent or was Sagan unnaturally perceptive?

"But why do you care, Sagan? If you are really so intelligent, you must have an opinion on this. Why do you care about Sam and me? Personally?"

Now nothing upon the geth so much as twitched. Five seconds passed uncomfortably by, then the geth's voice burst out in its soft volume.

"Your role is highly influential, Creator McLeod. You and Samuel both have the ability to provide us with the access we need to your main leadership within the capitol. The survival of all the remaining geth in the area is dependent upon your capability to assist us."

The answer had been plain, but Nya froze as she managed to decipher the underlying and veiled meaning of that statement.

"You trust us," Nya gasped. "You actually really trust us."

Organically, Sagan bobbed his head, as if it thought its stance was quite natural. "It would not be prudent to associate with untrustworthy individuals. The characters of everyone in your group are comprised of an innate desire to act in a positive manner. You are all highly receptive to logic and reason. Even now, Creator McLeod, you are engaged in a conversation with us that, until a time frame of two years ago, most Creators would have acted in disbelief at the mere mention of such an occurrence. We've anticipated a beneficial relationship stemming from such an accord."

"So how can you help us with our, um… 'group cohesion?'" Nya asked. "You mentioned that you could determine our physical and emotional ability to function? How could you figure that out?"

"Acquiring additional information and context leads to more thoughtful understanding for organics," Sagan answered. "The same is true for geth. To demonstrate, we have observed that both you and Samuel are both afflicted from previous physical trauma. Your specific breathing patterns occasionally become irregular at sporadic intervals – evidence of having previously suffered traumatic pneumothorax at one point. A collapsed lung would be the common term for the affliction."

 _It could determine all that just from watching me breathe?_ Nya wondered as her hand unconsciously traced the thin scar just above her navel. She suddenly became painfully aware of the tempo of her breathing, now mentally timing each intake of air as she struggled to detect any slight imperfections.

Raw, painful memories of her being beaten into the ground by a cackling street gang flooded her mind. She recalled how she had been punched, kicked, and spat upon just for the crime of being a quarian. All she had to show for it was a scar upon her body, but the attack left a lot more than that in her mind.

 _Yet_ , she justified, _had the attack not had happened, I would not have gotten to meet my husband._

"That's… correct," she whispered as she looked pensively at Sagan. "Is there anything else?"

Now she was hungry for more, her well of curiosity being dug deeper and deeper as she grew further from being satiated.

The geth's head tilted a few degrees. "Acknowledging the fact that a more detailed medical examination would reveal more, your slight respiratory affliction is the only factor that could justify cause for concern. However, in Samuel's case, he appears to be suffering from more accumulated and acute wounds. We have noticed that his left hand tends to undergo micro-spasms on occasion, drawing attention to the injury only when he clenches his hand in response. This is most likely the result of permanent nerve damage derived from an amputation of his limb. Additionally, Samuel's neck has a circular scar located at the point where his skin is closest to his trachea. Based on the location of his wound and the fact that his voice appears to be slightly altered as made evident by the various tonal inconsistencies, it can be deduced that he suffered trauma directly to his vocal cords as well as the inside of his throat. And judging by how far into the healing process his scar has gone, he most likely suffered this wound about a month ago at the most."

Nya nodded again, becoming less surprised at Sagan's superb insight. With the geth verbally recounting the afflictions her husband had suffered, it was easier than ever for her to mentally replay those memories one by one. She remembered swiftly traveling across a smoky battlefield on Earth, finding Sam clutching his wrist as a red arc sprayed out from where his hand had been cut off, a nearby quarian laying on the ground and bleeding from a shot to the gut. She keenly recalled lying on the floor upon the Citadel years later, with Sam twitching horribly on the floor, gurgling on his own blood as a fine green mist lingered in the air. The more she concentrated on these horrible memories, a distinct and phantom pain welled up in her own throat, almost causing her to cough in surprise.

"Yeah…" was all she was able to mutter at first before she cleared her throat and tenderly tugged at a flap of fabric on her arm to partially distract herself. "Sam lost a hand during the final battle of the war. It took months of therapy for him to be able to get most of his strength back in his reattached limb. The scar on his throat was from a chemical attack on the Citadel not a few weeks ago. He had his vocal cords dissolved and his entire throat was mangled, along with his eyes. He's had synthetic replacements ever since."

Sagan took a few crucial moments to process this information before it pulled the next question from its logic centers.

"These injuries that Samuel has accrued are substantial yet he has progressed and recovered in a more accelerated manner than the net average of individuals who have suffered similar wounds."

"I'm not surprised," Nya sat up proudly. "He's a strong man. He doesn't give up easily."

"His external physical wounds have healed or are nearly at full functionality, but his mental recovery appears to have stalled."

Nya worryingly tensed. "How can you tell?"

The geth lifted a hand, as if to prove a point, giving Nya another indication that there was more to Sagan than she had initially assumed.

"At this moment, Samuel is undergoing acute amounts of stress both at the physical and emotional level as a result of the intense psychological encounters that he has endured. Samuel is currently exhibiting symptoms of mydriasis, increased heart rate, and vasoconstriction – based on his slightly pale skin shade. Does this analysis appear to be in line with your observations?"

Nya's initial reaction was to deny the geth's conclusion purely out of reflex in defense of her husband, but deep down she knew better. It was true, she had been noticing a change in Sam's behavior. He had been more aggressive, more emotional lately. He seemed to be treading that razor edge boundary from having a complete breakdown since his injury – and it all had had been exacerbated when her father and the rest of his family had encroached upon the scene.

Yet what upset Nya the most was the fact that she had not been able to properly compile such a diagnosis together until someone else had pointed it out for her.

"That… seems… right," Nya croaked out in disbelief before she wildly stood up, her eyes firmly fixated upon Sagan. "What does that mean? Is Sam in pain and he hasn't been telling me?"

"Unknown," Sagan answered in a reasonable tone. "We have not compiled enough information to make a firm hypothesis as to if Samuel has been keeping you informed of the severity of his condition. From what can be inferred, based on his recent history of injury to his trachea and visual organs along with the negative interactions he has taken part in with both your biological and adopted kin, Samuel very well could be in the early stages of chronic stress as well as slight depression. Are there any other stressors that could potentially be causing Samuel damage?"

 _Sam? Depressed?_ Nya thought it was impossible. _He always appears so stoic and he's always been happy around me. Whatever could cause him to be in pain apart from-_

 _Ah._

 _Of course._

She felt like she shouldn't have forgotten, but, hand upon her heart, already she had.

"There is one thing," Nya began as she tugged anxiously on her arm. Her tongue seemed frozen, hesitant at opening a door for Sagan to peer into. The last thing that she wanted was to involve someone else in her problems, but this was different. Sagan genuinely seemed to have an interest in helping and he sat there silently, not hurrying her for more information like he understood the inner turmoil she was wrestling with.

Maybe all it would take would be a little perspective.

"Sam and I have talked about… having children one day. He knows that I would like one but he's been sort of evasive on the subject. I mean, we're able to talk about it, but he can't come to a decision whether he wants to go for it or not."

"Has he explained to you his reasoning for not making a commitment?" Sagan asked.

Nya placed her hands on her hips as she huffed and began to walk back and forth within the small room.

"He's just not keen on the idea that, if we do have a child, they will not have any of his genes, his qualities. He did admit that he would like me to conceive a child naturally, but it upsets him when he considers the fact that he… won't be part of the equation when such an event comes to pass. Sam… I don't know what else to say to him… how to convince him."

"Yet he hasn't given you a definitive negative answer?"

"No, he hasn't."

Sagan tilted his head and his optics glanced towards the door momentarily. The geth then smoothly rose on its feet, the hazy lighting flowing dimly down its yellow armor as it adopted a pose of placidity.

"Perhaps the conflict that Samuel is undergoing has less to do with the actual decision he faces," Sagan offered. "The emotional stress from this choice is the possible complicating factor. Perhaps his anguish is derived from being unable to make a timely answer. It is more than likely that Samuel already knows the choice he will make but he has difficulty justifying it within himself. That difficulty could potentially arise in the stress that he is facing because he could be distraught with the idea of disappointing you."

"Disappointing _me?_ " Nya physically indicated herself. "But… why would that make a difference?"

"If Samuel is clearly aware of your desire to produce a progeny, then it can be suspect that he will eventually follow your lead if he is still indecisive at this point in time. However, he may feel that he might not be acting within your standards based on the length of time he has yet to formulate a response. Indecision can breed negative emotions, given a certain period of time. A possible theory is that he believes you are let down by his inability to act upon this choice, which could compound his own frustration."

Before she could stop herself, Nya reached out and firmly grabbed Sagan's wrist. The geth was barely yielding to her touch; smooth, polished armor, and pliable synthetic muscle underneath. Sagan glanced down at the contact and back up at Nya, his lens retracting in an expression that mimicked curiosity.

"Sagan," Nya breathed, "Sam _has_ to know that I love him. He _must_ know! He would never think that I would be disappointed in him for not making a decision like this. It's a _life-changing_ decision, I can understand that it takes time. But he can't possibly think that I could be angry at him for that, could he?"

Both of Sagan's optics rotated to line up perfectly upright. "Is Samuel aware of your stance? Does he know that he has your unconditional support on the matter?"

Nya's fingers slipped away from the geth, the last lingering contact between quarian and geth finally lost between them. She clutched at her breastbone, fighting to keep from hyperventilating as her mind raced with endless possibilities. She backed into a nearby desk and nearly toppled over, but caught herself at the same time clarity surged throughout her.

"I don't know," she whispered, keenly aware at the silent look Sagan was giving her.

As she determinedly made eye contact, Sagan was able to detect a fierce glint in the quarian's eye that had not been detected before. Frankly, the geth was unsure if such a look was even quantifiable, but there was still something invisible that radiated off Nya that Sagan could still pick up that something was different.

"But…" the quarian continued, "I know how to fix it."

Nya practically took a flying leap as she hurtled through the door in two steps, yet she still remembered just in time to adjust her trajectory and to poke her head back into the apartment.

"Thank you, Sagan," she genuinely said, now brightened from the interaction.

If anything, Nya swore the geth stood up even straighter.

"We are glad that we could provide assistance," Sagan said, as humbly as a geth could manage in its dulcet voice.

A big smile hidden underneath her visor, Nya was finally unleashed as she took off to find and comfort a certain someone. Truly, they had no idea how lucky they were.

* * *

I, meanwhile, had just finished exiting from my conversation with Iroa, with a noticeably smaller lump in my throat than I would have expected. I say "conversation" because this was the first time between the two of us that did not end with us erupting into a screaming match, so this could undoubtedly be considered a significant improvement – for the both of us.

Maybe there was still some hope for the man after all.

Once I had emerged back out into the atrium, I did notice that Sagan was nowhere to be seen. Even though the disappearance of the geth was rather odd, it was of no concern as I do not believe that Iroa would pose a flight risk and would need only minimal guarding.

In any case, I wanted to recount my thoughts and I knew just the person to do so with.

Yet reality had a way of catching up faster than my own mental timetable because as soon as I rounded the corner toward the nearest stairwell, I very nearly collided with Nya who had apparently been taking the stairs three at a time while going at a tremendous pace.

" _Whoa!_ " I exclaimed as I caught my wife around the waist, just in time to prevent us from smashing into the other. "There you are, honey."

"H-Hi, Sam," Nya shakily apologized, a nervous twinge running through her. "Sorry about that."

Before I could deflect the apology in my usual flippant manner with her, Nya managed to step in closer, turning my touch into an embrace while she looped her arms around my neck. Her three fingered hands brushed my skin there, the grazes almost sensual in nature.

"Nya?" I softly laughed. "What's going on?"

She didn't answer me immediately but instead raised herself up on her tiptoes so that she could brush the side of her helmet against my face. No mistaking that action. One of her hands lovingly cupped my cheek, her limber fingers softly prodding my skin and beard.

"I love you," her voice melted into my ear.

"What has gotten _into_ you?" I whispered in amazement.

"I love you," she said again as she now pressed the top of her helmet against my forehead. Her eyes closed beyond the crimson glass, regretfully as if she yearned at this very moment to not be limited to her natural biological obstacle. "I love you, Sam. I'm going to say it until it drives us both mad. I love you so much."

Well, what could one do in this instance? The impolite thing would be to continue laughing and write all this off as a joke but it became apparent by the second time Nya had said the phrase that she could not be more serious unless she had proceeded to tattoo the phrase onto my face.

"I love you too," was my natural response as I closed my eyes as well, caught up in her passionate embrace. "But I still don't know what this is about."

"I just don't want you to feel that you're disappointing me," Nya mumbled emotionally. "You make me so proud every single day. I could never be disappointed in you, Sam. You are my dearest friend and the best man I have ever known. I am thankful that I got the chance to be with you and to love you, Sam. I just want you to know that."

It took all my strength not to buckle at her words. With my mouth drier than Rannoch's deserts, I felt all the sapped water all rush toward my tear ducts, wetting them as tears began their onslaught. Twice in one day, damn it. I'm not usually so prone to such bursts of emotion, yet records were meant to be broken. Clenching my eyes tighter, I managed to prevent most of my anguish from showing but a few tears managed to breach the barrier as they began their journey down my face. I sniffled helplessly, simultaneously dense yet perceptive to what Nya was referring.

"I'm… glad…" was all I could manage to croak out before my voice could crack any worse.

Nya murmured happily as she buried her head in the crook of my neck, her arms reaching all around me in one large hug. I rested my head on the top of her helmet, astonished and grateful as to the quarian's intuition, yet left wanting to know how she realized that I so dearly needed this when I had been oblivious to my own suffering in this way.

"Please," Nya softly moaned out. "I told you a long time ago that you do not have to carry these burdens by yourself. Let me help you."

"What did you have in mind, my love?" I asked as my hands pulled my wife in closer to the point where I was able to feel the heat through her enviro-suit, having a faint inkling as to where we were eventually going to end up. "I… I'm not sure you have to do this-,"

"You're right," Nya corrected. "I don't have to do this. I _need_ to do this. I can't abide you being miserable. I want to comfort you – make you happy."

"You can't possibly mean-,"

Nya just nodded smugly. "I do. I do mean that."

"But… you're going to get sick…"

"I don't care."

"I care."

"You're more important."

"Nya…" I shut my eyes regretfully as I sighed.

Nya shushed me with a finger to my lips. "Look," she said, "I should have noticed a long time ago that you've been in such a state. I don't want you to worry anymore about what I think. I just want you to realize that I will always love you and that I'm perfectly willing to prove it to you. Just ask, and I will show you."

"I would like that very much." In spite of myself, I smiled broadly. "But I think there's something more important that I have to tell you first. I think that it's something that you definitely would want to hear."

"What is it?"

Deeply, I inhaled. I mentally imagined my ruined vocal cords knitting together just enough for this next sentence to pass through uncompromised. Stiff muscles tensed and relaxed as one, allowing a release of pressure for me to take one last free breath. Words have never been my strong suit.

"Nya… I want-,"

I never finished the sentence. I couldn't, because all of a sudden there was a certain wave of pressure that unexpectedly slammed into the two of us like a freight train, forcing the words back down my throat and into my lungs. Wind tore at our bodies and the ground left our feet as we were thrown by the explosion that occurred along the far wall of the atrium. Our screams were heard only by each other and our arms held our loved ones safely and securely, so that even when we hit the ground on our sides hard, we still managed to clutch onto one another.

 _KRA-KOW!_

And then the noise of the detonation hit, deafening us and creating ringing in our ears. We rolled around on the ground in pain, hands clasped over our ears (or helmet) as we tried to overcome the overwhelming sound.

A lick of flame danced from an opening in the stone and curtains of dust poured in from outside, revealing a thick shaft of sunlight that seared across the interior of the facility, silhouetted only by the humanoid shape of the intruder that calmly stepped inside, the outline of a shotgun in their hands now apparent, as they steadily closed the distance from where we lay.

A singular word popped into my head and my lips immediately hissed past my deafness to deliver the frantic message to my similarly-pained wife.

 _Run._

* * *

 **A/N: Held this chapter for a couple days as the site has currently been having issues regarding sending new story updates for over a week. Hopefully the problem has run its course by now.**

 **Anyway, I hope everyone liked the chapter. It was a bit heavy on the dialogue portions, but I can say that the next couple of chapters are going to get a little crazy with the action. Should be fun (for me, at least!)**

 **Sam and Iroa on the Balcony: "Properties of Explosive Materials" by Jóhann Jóhannsson from the film _Arrival_. I've already gushed enough on this film, so I'll spare everyone for the moment. I think this piece is very symbolic of the relationship Sam and Iroa have at this point in time: calm and collected, yet the tone is very worried underneath the surface, as if Sam expecting things to blow up any second. **

**Nya and Sagan Converse: "A Cry for Help" by James Horner from the film _Southpaw_. Although a depressing piece, there is still a soft, stirring hope that manages to linger in the background, as represented by the piano. As Sagan provides his detailed analysis, Nya's mood fluctuates just like the cue from relief to horror but quickly back to being sanguine.**

 **Also, if you're at all a fan of flashy sci-fi movies (probably a good guess, seeing as you're in this section), you'd better go and see _Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2_. I guarantee that you will have a blast - it is such a ton of fun!**


	13. Chapter 13: Inferior Rising

_Run…_

 _Run…_

 _Are you listening?_

 _Can you hear the screams?_

 _Run…_

 _Colors collate. Particles freeze in breath. Taste death on tongue._

 _Run…_

 _All so familiar. Sweat becomes like leaves, sheathing in clear planes. Smell of firewood, crisp and tingly._

 _Can you feel it? It's time to go._

 _RUN!_

* * *

The shock waves finished rippling through my body, jiggling the subcutaneous fat and distorting my outline. The burn mark in my vision turned several shades that I could not give a name to, before dimming to a tiny gray point. As my wits slowly returned, so did the pain – a dull, throbbing ache, only comparable to the full-body pulsations one gets on the onset of a severe illness.

So this is what it felt like to be thrown by an explosion.

When your body emits too much adrenaline, time starts to feel diluted, stretched out. As your eyes shift from point to point, it seems like the world is struggling to catch up with you, rendering everything a blurred mess. It feels like you're drunk, only your perception is tuned up so high that your brain is literally overclocking itself instead of slushing through impairment whilst being in an intoxicated state. Once you can properly focus on a singular mark, your level of sensation is dialed up to eleven, to the point where you swear that you could perceive porous imperfections upon a man a dozen meters away.

It is the purest form of being overwhelmed, as well as the most literal. Nothing that your body can naturally produce can compare with the high brought on by a system saturation of adrenaline. It is a blessing, yet a curse that is a necessary chemical for our brain.

Your joints begin to ache. You start to twitch. Your breath comes in short bursts. Pain knifes from unexpected places. Teeth chatter in a dry mouth. It feels like your brain is being electrocuted.

The body is slow to respond – attempting to stand feels like it takes hours. Noise in your ears gets partially drowned out by a tinny ringing. The other senses – taste and touch are amplified seemingly tenfold. You are on high alert. It is inhumanly possible for you to be more reactive than you currently are at this point in time. Muscles can now react in microseconds – you could theoretically swat a fly out of the air with practiced ease if you were in my state.

All of these were the sensations currently midway through their assault on my person. Nya was undoubtedly going through the same torment, judging from the twitching her fingers betrayed as she too stood, wobbling as she did so. I tried to take a full breath, but something was preventing my lungs from expanding fully – any further effort would be for naught as I was left to taking half-breaths in rapid succession, inhaling quickly so that I would not black out from a lack of oxygen.

Yep, definite adrenaline side-effect.

It seemed to be taking an eternity for the full range of my hearing to return, but that was more or less caused by the explosion that had literally flung us across the room just a minute ago. Dust had billowed into the atrium in a veiled mass, clouding the area as the particles could not float anywhere else. I smelled the burnt tell-tale scent of cordite – yet more evidence that an explosive was used to breach into this place, sharp to my nostrils. I rubbed at my nose and eyes to clear them of the irritation.

In the quick lull, I took a few seconds to pat myself down and make sure that I hadn't broken anything. Wouldn't you know that the properties of explosions are not all that gentle? Miraculously, apart from a few scrapes and abrasions from being picked up and thrown to the ground like a sack of trash, I was unharmed. Nya had apparently evaded injury too, as no tears to her enviro-suit could be picked up, although she would definitely be bruised underneath. If she was nursing any other wounds that I could not determine by sight alone, she was doing a good job in keeping them hidden from me.

Brain addled, it took some effort to come to my senses. I was so badly shaken that I literally had to halt my thoughts and backtrack to gain the complete picture.

 _Where were we?_

Rannoch, in a pre-war apartment complex, remember?

 _What the hell is going on?_

An explosion hurled you across the room. You're lucky you didn't hit your head. Should definitely thank that wife of yours for grabbing onto you at the last minute.

 _Who did this?_

Take a guess, genius. Who else wants you dead or maimed right now?

 _Eyzn. Him and his mother, Kraana. They've found us._

No shit, Sherlock. Also, why the hell are you still standing out in the open like a dumbass?

As soon as the fog surrounding my thoughts lifted, shadowy figures stepped in front of the sunlight that had been suddenly thrown into the room, through the new hole that had been blasted inwards. One could tell that these new arrivals were not in the neighborhood to share a cup of tea or to discuss the meaning of life, because these humanoid shapes were touting objects that vaguely looked like guns through all the silt and smoke. Based on how many of our encounters had gone during this entire vacation, assuming that they were guns was probably quite a reasonable hypothesis in this case.

A section of the dust cloud fell away, confirming my suspicious and revealing the first of what appeared to be several quarians of many hued enviro-suits, all hefting weapons of various sizes and shapes. At least three of the troopers were immediately visible to me, with an army of similarly sized shadows taking up positions in the background.

A wall of guns pointed in our direction formed in seconds. All that was left was to wait for the crackle of mass accelerators to shatter our already battered eardrums. Comprehending the sight, I groaned out loud.

" _I see them!_ " a rather young voice, one of Kraana's marines yelled. " _Take them!_ "

Red laser sights swept through the airborne powder and leveled onto our chests before starting to dip lower, heading for our legs. Already I was grasping for Nya, hauling her in the direction of cover behind a hallway corner when a rapid series of reports boomed against our ears and brought to our noses the smell of ozone.

Nya and I cried out, already imagining the snaps and zips the bullets would make as they flew past our bodies. Even though it had been years since we had been shot at, I still remembered the sensation quite well, sadly. However, that dreadful feeling never came to pass, as the air was not exactly vibrating from projectiles headed our way, but in fact from shots coming from the _opposite_ direction, an invisible charge making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Blue bolts streaked by over our heads as we hunkered safely behind corner, sheltered from our foes' line of sight. Glistening plasma impacted upon the stone wall just above the heads of the quarian marines, causing them to shout in alarm and hastily scramble for whatever refuge they could find as molten red-hot globules of stone rained down upon them, electricity crackling in the air.

From behind a pillar, the expanse of the chamber separated only by a guardrail behind him, Sagan touted his Spitfire rifle, the barrel smoking as it gradually stopped rotating. The geth's finger hovered a millimeter above the trigger, synthetic muscles locking the joint safely in place as his upper torso smoothly continued to point in the direction of the hostiles.

"Christ!" I exclaimed as I beheld the geth, Nya clenched against me. "I've got to say, Sagan, your timing is impeccable."

"We are pleased that our arrival was appropriately timed," Sagan humbly acknowledged as he calmly fired his Spitfire again, the recoil barely moving the geth's arms while brilliant superconducting toroids shot out at a rate of 5000 bolts per minute. "It is recommended that we retreat, Samuel, Creator McLeod. We lack the firepower to face an enemy force of this magnitude."

"Do you know of a place we can bunker down?!" Nya yelled to the geth over the crackling fire as the marines began a hasty and clumsy counterattack, sending wild and undirected fire in the direction of our sheltered positions.

Sagan nodded, its optics never tearing away from the main combat zone. "Yes, although we must lose our pursuers as that will grant us the best chance of survival."

I gritted my teeth as I finally yanked my Talon pistol from my jacket holster. I gingerly peered around the corner only to jerk my head back as a stray shot chipped the wall next to me, sending shards of stone hurtling toward my eye.

"Fuck," I seethed as I rubbed at my face.

Enraged, I aimed my pistol around the corner and pulled the trigger a few times in anger, a satisfying kick reverberating through my pistol every time I fired. I was not in a good enough position to take proper aim at our attackers, so I knew that I was probably not hitting anything to begin with, but this act of firing, even blindly, would give the quarians pause and help in halting their advance upon us. I listened for yowls of pain anyway, only to be met with the usual void of silence that was occasionally interrupted by the harsh booms from firearm reports.

"Well, we're screwed if we stay here," I conceded as I thumbed the switch to eject my spent heat sink. "Where can we go to get away from these assholes?!"

As I watched the heat sink that I ejected clatter away, I was vaguely reminded that the last time I had been in a combat scenario was back during the war. What I did not need to be reminded of was the fact that I had been a frankly terrible combatant and always wound up with some injury of varying severity. One had to imagine that this was life's way of playing a cruel joke at my expense: by somehow surviving a war in which I statistically should have been killed in, I was now thrown back into the fire with a chance to prove if the earlier example was a fluke.

Sometimes life really fucking sucks.

"The maintenance alleys provide an ample amount of cover and, given that we proceed at a faster pace, we stand a greater probability of evasion upon that route," Sagan explained as he knelt down, only for his head to snap up in alarm and the gun in his arms whined again, resulting in a marine screaming as he flung himself out of the way of Sagan's fire, the stone dripping where the quarian had been just seconds before.

I realized the deliberate pattern that the geth was demonstrating and I looked at Sagan in incredulity. "You're not even aiming for them?!" I hollered over the noise.

"They are my Creators," Sagan answered simply. "We do not wish to cause them harm."

"Even though they wish to harm _us?_ Harm _you?_ "

"Unless there is no alternative, we will not utilize violence against Creator forces or any other sentient lifeforms."

"And why the fuck not?!" I screamed, wincing as a bullet howled by, additional fire pockmarking the walls beyond. This was certainly a departure for the war-mongering machine devils that the media had done such a good job of illustrating years earlier.

Sagan's optics now whirled to face me even as he continued to aim back down the hall. "Violence against Creators resulted in open warfare between geth and Creators," the geth said evenly. "The geth did not start that prior conflict, yet our answering push resulted in the near-extinction of geth in the galaxy. If we terminate a Creator, considering the current political climate, the galactic opinion will be influenced that our complete annihilation would be not only ideal, but necessary. We wish to forestall that circumstance unless survival is dependent on our escalated response."

"Lucky for you I can get away with that," I growled as I whirled around to level a few shots around the corner. Misses, all of them, but they would keep the quarians pinned down just a little while longer.

I shuffled in and out of cover, breathing quickly as a result of being shot at. Clenching my eyes shut momentarily, I screwed up my courage so that I could make one more attempt at providing cover fire. Yet mere seconds after my pistol edged out from the scuffed corner, a stray bullet nicked the side of the firearm, tearing it out of my hand and jamming a couple of my fingers in the process.

"God dammit!" I yelled as I instinctively clutched my hand to my chest, tenderly prodding my ring and pinky fingers. It hurt to bend them slightly and tears sprang to my eyes as I haltingly clenched a fist. Yeah, I definitely jammed those fingers.

My pistol lay only a few feet away, but it was clear that I would not have a use for it anymore. The bullet had completely ruined the gun, its electronic innards were sprayed across the floor. Bits of wire and polymer were spread everywhere and the frame uselessly sparked where it lay. Now it was no good to anyone except for usage as a paperweight.

Nya grabbed my shirt collar and hauled me to my feet. "That's it, mister," she loudly chided. "We're leaving. Leave the fighting to someone else, for once." To the geth she now yelled as she yanked her own pistol free, "Sagan! How far is it to the nearest maintenance access point?"

"Twenty six point two meters northeast of our direction," Sagan answered, momentarily pausing as he moved to kick a flashbang away as it rolled into our vicinity. The resulting bang and screams of pain and alarm indicated to us that the geth's aim was uncanny in every format. "Additional hostiles inbound. Recommend that we retreat immediately."

"Wait, wait, wait!" I yelled as I grabbed Sagan's arm and turned to face the geth and Nya. "Rie and Chandler, did you see them? We need to find them right away!"

The geth raised an arm to prevent me from passing by, and spoke before I had a chance to snarl in anger at him.

"Riena and Chandler were last witnessed ascending the adjacent stairwell from the facility's main entrance. They were no doubt alerted to the chaotic noises and elected to retreat. At their current rate, they should be located on the sixth floor at this moment. We are more exposed in our current position than they are – it is time to depart."

More gunshots sang out from the blasted corridor, sending ripples through the dust and smoke as they zoomed on through the air. A few bullets ricocheted across the stone floor and pillars at shallow angles, creating high-pitched, sharp notes that echoed in our ears and within the chamber. Now the noise of heavy footfalls were fast approaching our position. With us being able to only offer limited covering fire, the quarian soldiers had correctly deduced that rushing where we were situated was the best tactic in this tense firefight, and without my pistol, our odds of putting up a capable resistance had dwindled dramatically.

It was only after a rapid lick of automatic fire punched the stone wall near my head, a stray rock chip cutting along the back of my hand, did I finally receive that extra burst of adrenaline and norepinephrine that enabled me to finally leap away, placing the fate of myself and my wife in the hands of a geth.

God help me.

"Maintenance alley," I grabbed at the armor at Sagan's collar. "Go!"

* * *

During the initial, brief exchange that had transpired in the complex's hallways, the only one not as alarmed as the rest of us just so happened to be the only individual currently trapped within one of the apartments, initially oblivious to the fragile and somewhat temperamental exchange of violence transpiring outside his door.

Iroa had actually been enjoying himself as he sunk into a partial siesta, only to be jostled awake when the walls had started exploding and the bullets had started firing. Thoroughly confused, Iroa had wandered into the living area of the apartment, curiously eying the doorway as he tried to wonder exactly what the hell was going on just outside into the hall.

The man verbally echoed this sentiment as he repeatedly hollered expletive-laden inquires towards the door, even though he did not expect to receive an answer in kind. Frustrated, Iroa paced around the room, growing only more and more tense as each distant detonation sent winces through his body. He had no clue as to what was happening – actually, his deepest fear at the time was for the safety of his daughter, rightfully concerned with all of the action that was going on beyond his sight, even though I or no one else could properly guess the man's hidden emotions.

Another nearby crackle finally halted Iroa in his tracks, his head turning in the direction from where he perceived the noise.

"By the Ancestors," Iroa growled, fed up with the incessant noises. "What in the name of-,"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, because a blinding blue ball of plasma suddenly began sparking over the lock of his door, sending molten globs of metal dribbling to the floor as the threshold slowly was eaten away by the intense heat. Smoke poured in from the searing-hot metallic liquid as the miniature furnace kept on chugging away. Eventually, the blazing light extinguished and the last of the sparks fizzled out upon the ground, leaving the door to casually slide open now that the lock had been thoroughly liquefied.

A darkened figure confidentially stepped through the wall of choking and pungent smoke, giving Iroa a brief start as he recognized the individual immediately.

"How in the…" he could only mutter hoarsely.

"Hello dear," Kraana greeted as she pored over the relatively sparse room first before her eyes settled onto her husband. She sultrily walked up to her husband and slid her arms over her mate's shoulders. "Good to see you again. Are you all right? Have you been mistreated by those barbarians?"

Iroa quizzically blinked in surprise, trying to wrap his head around being confronted with his wife again.

"N-No, I'm quite all right," he hesitantly answered. "I haven't been hurt. How did you even find me? What the hell is going on outside?"

"Never mind that right now," the woman shook her head dismissively, even as quiet thumps and yells reverberated from outside. "All you need to know is that Eyzn kept his word when he said he'd come back for you. We never would have found this place had he not escape, but all that's beside the point. What matters is that you're safe and that we will have everything under control quite soon."

"Under control? From the noises out there in the hall it doesn't _seem_ like things are under control. What is even happening?"

Kraana reached out and lightly placed a hand upon the side of Iroa's mask, her thumb sinisterly positioned millimeters away from one of the man's catches for his mask.

"This is all for _you_ , honey. When your daughter and that human husband of hers decided to kidnap you, I did make a promise to them that I would pay them back for what they did. I'm simply fulfilling that promise, after all."

Iroa timidly looked out into the atrium, where he was now able to perceive the dusty interior occasionally illuminated by a bright blaster bolt every now and then. Haltingly, he then began to understand the full extent of what his wife's promise meant exactly after yet another detonation split the air excruciatingly close by.

"You have to stop this," he whispered.

"Why?" Kraana scoffed. "After what they did to you? No, we need to show them that you – _us_ – we cannot be trifled with. They dared to lay their filthy hands on you and they need to be punished accordingly."

"You do not need to use force to get them to come with us!" Iroa yelled, dismayed. "There does not need to be any punishment! I've been talking to them, I've made headway with them! This isn't necessary, Kraana! You have to call the troops back before Nyareth gets hurt. She's my only-,"

Immediately, Iroa found himself pressed up against the wall by his wife, their visors a hair's width apart as their silver gazes stoically found the other, snow-white against sunburst yellow glass surfaces. Kraana was breathing heavily and a panicked Iroa had frozen in place, uncomprehending this sudden burst of rage from the woman, this almost euphoric anger.

"Your only… _what?_ " Kraana dangerously hissed. "What where you going to say… dear?"

"I…" Iroa said blankly, desperately trying not to look her in the eye. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

The woman gave a sneer underneath her visor. "Don't lie, husband. It doesn't befit you. You were about to say ' _child_ ,' weren't you?"

Indelicately, Iroa gave a sudden shove to Kraana, separating the two with a surprised grunt. The quarians now stood alone in the bare apartment, both breathing heavily as they considered the other in the dusty interior.

"Don't be ridiculous," Iroa scowled as he adjusted the hood atop his helmet. "I was not going to say that. What I was going to say, before you interrupted me, was that Nyareth is my daughter and I don't want her to get hurt! Is that not logical for me to want such a thing?"

Kraana gave a sinister laugh as she now looped her thumbs around the belt that constricted her waist. "I'm starting to wonder now if you're as loyal to me and to my son as you proclaim. You seem rather intent on securing a legacy that conveniently continues your bloodline, if not for at least another generation."

"That's not fair. She was my daughter long before I ever met you."

"And you knew me long before you even _met_ her."

"She's family, Kraana. The last thing I want is for my family to tear itself apart from these blind claims of favoritism!"

The woman just chuckled, her laugh clinking like fine china. "The ironic thing is that I may be the one who can see everyone's motivations the clearest. You might want to turn that omniscient gaze upon yourself if you truly want to see the blind one among us."

Iroa opened his mouth to retort back, only to find that he had nothing in his arsenal to strike back with. Kraana lifted an eyebrow in anticipation, waiting for her husband to strike back with a blow that would never land, in the end. Disappointed, the woman slowly shook her head.

"Your silence only implicates you further," Kraana's tongue slid over each syllable while she smoothly walked to leave the room. "We will have to discuss this later, it seems. In the meantime, I wouldn't worry about a thing. You'll have your little family reunited soon enough, and then you'll be able to live the life you've always wanted."

Iroa watched her leave as he very gradually began to shake. He nearly tripped out of the apartment as he got one last, helpless look at Kraana's back as she was flanked by two bodyguards, before they briskly turned to head up the nearest stairwell.

"Don't harm Nyareth!" Iroa cried out to his departing wife. "I beg you, I don't want her harmed!"

It was disconcerting to the man that he had no idea what would perturb him more: a cryptic and foreboding parting comment from Kraana… or from the silence that she would maintain instead.

He helplessly wondered if he had given his own wife the impression that she never factored into his grand equation at all.

* * *

 _Take the maintenance route, they said… It'll be fun, they said…_

There was a quick tapping noise making its way through the pipes in front of my face and I only had a second to duck before a thin spout of steam hissed in a jet where my head had just been. I could feel the boiling gas ruffling my hair and I loudly swore, the heat already making its way to my scalp.

I really should have asked Sagan for more clarification regarding the practicalities of utilizing such a route because this maintenance alley was more like a shaft, and a thin one at that. Only a few feet wide, there was barely enough maneuvering room for Nya and I to traverse the area quickly, to the point where we had to shimmy along sideways in some areas in order to proceed at the brisk pace that Sagan was somehow able to manage. Good thing I was not claustrophobic otherwise I would have collapsed in fits by now. If I were a fat man, this option would have been ruled out from the very start and even then it felt like I was scraping my gut along the opposite wall, for it was that cramped in here.

The quarians' hatred of wasted space was well-reflected in the design of this access tunnel, even before they ever knew they were going to have to abandon their homeworld. With these tight dimensions, it was certainly plausible for two quarians to somehow make their way past one another here, but hopeless for two humans to even attempt. Add to the myriad obstacles (pipes, bars, bats) marring the path and you had yourself a recipe for one hell of an obstacle course.

How this was considered a suitable working environment in the first place would forever be a mystery to me. Perhaps the quarians just had a better work ethic.

Sagan had led us to the entrance of this channel after fleeing the troopers firing in our direction. At the beginning to where the shaft stretched deep into the complex had been a thin door situated in the far corner upon yet another hallway's dead end. The stone threshold was so well camouflaged against the surrounding walls that even if you were looking for such a door, you would still have a difficult time trying to find it. Fortunately, our geth guide knew every single nook and cranny of this complex, so he was able to show us all the proper routes without wasting any valuable time, demonstrated when he simply walked up to the innocuous surface and pulled on a hidden handle, swinging the door open for us to proceed. Yeah, definitely a good thing that Sagan was on our side, as every moment we spent out in the open was just an invitation for the troops Kraana had brought to track us down.

Making matters worse, though, was that the actual shaft was littered with obstacles just waiting to ruin my day, if I were to take one misplaced step. A complete tangle of pipes ran along the sides, floor, and ceiling, making an already cramped area even smaller. Also, whoever placed these pipes either had no respect for the maneuverability of any organics unlucky enough to trapeze through here, or I was lacking in a basic understanding of building architecture because several of these pipes were prone to just randomly jut out, cut across the ceiling for me to bang my head upon them, or to hold themselves at the perfect height across the ground for me to trip upon them and break my teeth from a hard landing.

In addition to being crowded into a passage the width of a TV dinner, we had to contend with the occasional spout of steam from leaks in the pipes that threatened to shoot into our eyes like the instance that had occurred just a minute ago. The shaft was humid and water-saturated to begin with, with rolling clouds of moisture gently floating through the air and into the occasional grate that lined the ceiling and let a shabby light beat down upon our heads. Unluckily, I was the only one in any real danger from the white-hot steam, as Sagan had no organic pain receptors and Nya was protected by her enviro-suit. All I had on hand was a jacket – so I had to be extra careful.

"Mother… fucking… piece of…" I grumbled as my cheek scraped a rusty pipe, my back jutting at an odd angle from having to maneuver through the metal spaghetti.

Nya shushed me with a prod to my shoulder blade. I clenched my jaw but that did not discourage me from lamenting every new ache that this shaft threatened to impart onto me.

Of course Sagan was able to traverse this place with ease. He was a geth, a synthetic with the capability to analyze entire environments in an instant and to determine the optimal body position to situate himself in for maximum efficiency. That had to be how the geth was moving so quickly, at the pace of a very brisk walk while Nya and I were clearly struggling to keep up. Several times Sagan had to stop and wait, and if he had been organic, I would have seen a note of impatience reflected in his body posture. Perhaps even a tap of the foot would be demonstrated. Yet, Sagan's task was to accompany these useless organics to safety, even if it meant wasting a little bit of time to accommodate their handicap.

I know Sagan didn't mean it, but I resented being portrayed as substandard.

Somewhat irked by Sagan's placid attitude at making this shuffle look easy, I foolishly decided to ramp up the pace at which I was traveling, now ducking and jumping over errant pipes. I was spurred by both Sagan's natural ability and the fact that we were still being pursued, even though it would take a miracle for the quarians to track us through the maze of maintenance corridors.

My showboating was quickly brought to a halt after I rushed through another steam cloud only to smack my forehead straight onto a low bar, sending me flat on my ass with a nasty headache to boot.

"Oww…" I pitifully moaned as I clasped a hand to my head. "Son of a bitch…"

Two arms wrapped around me as titan strength helped to bring me back to my feet. "Dammit, Sam," Nya grunted as she lifted me. "Slow down, you idiot. You keep on hurting yourself like this and soon a concussion is going to be the least of your worries."

"Ugh, I could have told you that," I muttered as I indeed saw the blood on my fingers. As I fished in my pocket for some medi-gel, I looked to Sagan, who had wandered a few steps back toward us once he realized that we had halted. "How much further do we have to go?"

"There is a shaft that we must access at the next crossroads," the geth answered. "We must then cross an external access point to reach the next level. From there, we will be able to reach the corridor that leads to where you have left your ship."

A hand tugged at my jacket sleeve while I had been fruitlessly searching for the salve to apply to the cut on my forehead. I looked over and saw that Nya was offering me her own medi-gel packet in a hand, the package gently resting upon a soft limb in the grungy light.

"Thank you," I softly said to her after applying the salve, but kept my face neutral even as the medi-gel slowly stung over the gash in my forehead. "I'm good, guys. We can go."

Nya did not look completely convinced, based on how her eyes were situated, but she let it go as both of us knew that we really did not have any time to dawdle. Sweat and water coated my brow from the humid atmosphere, turning my skin damp, in addition to the couple rivulets of blood that had clotted to my forehead.

Continuing to follow Sagan, we indeed happened upon a shaft that led straight upwards, illuminated only by yellow flashing argon tubing that caused shadows to dance schizophrenically across the walls. In contrast to my random expectation that we would have to clumsily scale old and slimy ventilation in order to proceed upwards, I was relieved to discover that the original quarian architects had installed a ladder for people like us to utilize. How about that, the first design system that actually made sense in this damn shaft.

Climbing proved to be a simple affair, with the three of us barely making any noise as we heaved ourselves up upon the stiff metal bars. The passage here was relatively clear of obstructions (for once) and we must have cleared several stories before the ladder finally ended and we were allowed to proceed once more at our regular pace.

"Access hatch ten meters ahead," Sagan pointed through the dim facility. "We will have to venture outside in order to reach the public traffic sectors."

"Just lead the way," Nya said, harried, still shaken up.

Without another word, Sagan ducked under one last jutting protrusion before reaching a seemingly bare wall. Gripping at a hold hidden behind a valve, the geth yanked with incredible strength, creating a horrendous wrench of steel on steel as the door slid aside.

A beautiful red light seared into my eyes momentarily, my implants sending a painful shock in reminder to close my lids. I gasped and raised a hand to ward off the sun, but eventually forced my eyes open as fresh air and a very open sound of wind greeted me.

As my vision returned, I dearly wished that I had not been looking down as I did so.

"Err… hope you're not afraid of heights," Nya timidly quipped to break the undoubtedly frosty mood that had permeated the two organics. Sagan, unsurprisingly, was unfazed.

It was quite a transition to go from feeling like a sardine in a constricting corridor to be thrown out into the outside world of Rannoch as the sun and wind tore at my body. Normally this would not be too much of a hurdle for me to overcome, except that the three of us were now situated upon a ledge that was bolted to a sandy rock wall – the cliff face – while a half mile vertical drop beckoned to us a mere pace to the right, a one-way trip down at terminal velocity to the dense jungle situated in the valley below.

Instinctively, I jumped backward, my body hugging the rock for support. "Aw, hell," I groaned, now starting to regret eagerly following Sagan again. What a roller-coaster of emotions this shortcut turned out to produce.

It wasn't like I was being difficult just to annoy everyone. The walkway was not all that wide, there was a definite killing drop just inches away, and to top it all off, there were no safety mechanisms to prevent any one of us from falling. No bars, no nets, just a ledge then open air.

"Why didn't they invest in _guardrails?_ " I moaned in frustration, but eventually mustered my nerve to clomp along the gangway, my left hand making sure to brush the side of the cliff at all times, leaving dirt and residue upon my fingertips.

Eager to get off this suspended path, we all unconsciously began to proceed at a fast walk, left to only go wherever the walkway led. To my dismay, the metal track curved around every bend of the cliff that I could see, and some of the sections in the grating were missing, probably from any one of the hallmarks stemming from disuse. We had to jump across these gaps, which was probably one of the most nerve-wracking things I've ever done in my life, yet none of us had any issues with doing so in the fact that neither of us tripped or stumbled, even though these gaps were an open invitation for trouble. If Nya was at all uncomfortable with this, then she had on a good poker face. I, meanwhile, was pretty sure that my fear was imprinted all over my face.

We hurried along outside for about fifteen minutes in total, until Sagan stopped at a square metal plate seemingly bolted onto the sandstone face. With a wrench and strength beyond what I could conjure, the geth swung the lock open and pushed the door aside for all of us to enter. I let out a loud sigh of relief once we were back into the stuffed and congested maintenance corridors, anxious for the slight shaking in my limbs to cease after that harrowing encounter.

Ironic that I was now grateful to be back into a place that I had initially lamented being stuck in. I guess it just goes to show that things could always get worse.

"Any more surprises you'd like to share?" I sourly commented to Sagan after I could feel warmth in my fingers again.

"Negative," the geth said, his tone signaling that it was vocally shrugging. "Our objective is fifteen point four meters straight down this alley. After that, we will be in areas intended for public foot traffic with an easily accessible route to your vessel."

"Thank the fucking lord."

Sagan's optics were bright enough to serve as flashlights, since this section that we were in lacked any light fixtures and were therefore quite useful. We might not have needed the assistance as the tubing here was not inconveniently placed nor were we going to be lingering long, as it took less than half a minute for us to reach the appropriate door that we needed to travel through to reach the next stage of our impromptu evacuation.

I could have hugged the threshold for all I cared. No more feeling like I was being put through a milling machine. No more danger of slipping and falling off a cliff. Smooth sailing from here on out, right? We could avoid the rogue quarians hunting us via this simple path and then we'd-

A muffled voice suddenly sounded from beyond the door, causing all three of us to freeze in place. It was not a sound that we recognized, which meant that the individual who spoke was standing, from the sound of things, just in front of the door.

An unrecognizable voice meant only one thing: the speaker was most likely hostile in nature.

"… _haven't been any sight of them_ ," the slightly tinny voice said. " _Two of ours spotted a dark-skinned human and a female turian hustle up the stairs a couple levels above us, but those aren't the ones Eyzn wants. Squad 3's been having a time trying to catch them as the human has simply been throwing our forces back down the stairs with biotic attacks. If I get a readout on the main targets, I will certainly let you know."_

Damn! How the hell did the soldiers make it up here before we did? Unfortunately, there was no turning back. The quarians might very well have discovered the passageway we spent the better part of an hour trying to traverse, and this was the only exit that led back to the ship. This was quite the pickle that we were in, as going back was not an option and going forward was looking rather shaky as well.

Sagan leaned forward as he listened to the man on the other end speak some more. "Samuel," he spoke quietly to me. "Based on audible patterns, the Creator soldier is less than four feet in front of the door."

"Got a plan, I presume?" I asked.

"We will open this door because our chassis is better designed to shift higher loads, and you will have to subdue the Creator. You will have to act quickly, otherwise the Creator may try to kill you."

"Sam!" Nya urgently whispered as she grabbed at my wrist. "Whatever you do, please don't kill him. He's only following orders, I don't want you to kill any of my people."

I let out a grim laugh, saddened at the fact that someone had to make this request from me.

"I don't think I would have it in me otherwise," I murmured as I tensed my body. "I've been trying to live out my life without killing anyone, and it's been going well so far. Not about to break that streak just yet."

Sagan silently positioned himself at the door, the geth's body poised to push the hefty covering out of the way. "Awaiting your command, Samuel."

Imagining every single curse that I could possibly muster within my skull, I once again berated my dumb luck for getting involved in such a mess. I must have annoyed some deity quite badly, considering the circumstances I've endured. Sighing, I rubbed my hands, lowered my stance, and prepared to charge, with Nya right behind me – at my six, as the saying goes.

"Do it," I breathed.

The geth yanked, and filtered light burst into the corridor as sheets of dust crumbled and fell from the passageway as it revealed itself. I was out and running as soon as I estimated that the gap was wide enough to accommodate me, and I heard a surprised yelp milliseconds before my outstretched arms met another enviro-suit clad body, only for my full weight to impact with the person in a hefty tackle.

There was no way I could have done it any better. Air was expelled out of the thin soldier's lungs with a _whumpf!_ and his breathing was further impacted as I slammed his back onto the ground quite firmly. With a clatter, the quarian's assault rifle skidded away, safely putting us out of any relative danger as I now had to contend with the struggling maroon-colored man that I was currently positioned on top of.

The soldier screamed, a higher pitch than I had imagined, but I had no time to dwell on it. The noise was going to attract every bastard within earshot. Heart in my throat, memories of being in a scuffle like this before noxious chemicals overwhelmed me, momentarily filled my system with fear and dread. This was quickly quelled because the quarian I was entangled with seemed more intent on freeing himself from my clutches rather than try to commit an act of bio-terrorism.

The man was still screaming and since I did not have the ability to force the man's mouth shut, I simply resorted to more barbarian tactics. I punched the quarian in the head, twice.

I fought to keep my own yowls of pain restrained because punching a solid helmet like the ones quarians wore felt like I was pulverizing every bone in my fingers. Miraculously, I had not broken anything in my hands from doing this, but now my jammed finger was giving me holy hell and starting to turn an angry shade of purple and black.

The soldier's head lolled, dazed. Sagan and Nya ran up to offer assistance, but the man was not in a combative mood anymore, to say the least. His entire body was shaking something fierce and his breathing had been steadily and erratically increasing ever since I whacked the living daylights out of him.

" _Please_ …" he muttered pitifully. "Please don't… don't kill me…"

Nya and I noted something and the two of us shared a startled look.

"What the hell?" I mumbled as I gently shook the soldier, trying to get a better look into the man's eyes through his dark visor.

"Sam, he's…" Nya knelt down next to me, her voice sporadically halting. "He's just a _kid_."

Ordinarily trying to determine the age of a quarian would be entirely based on luck and guesswork, but in this case, it was a rather simple affair. If the relative smaller size of the soldier was not a giveaway, then the obvious youthfulness of the man's voice was. I'd have to put the quarian at being in his early twenties, maybe even late teens.

Way younger than I had ever assumed, most likely pre-Pilgrimage age. Perhaps too young for this sort of work. Was this what Iroa's little troupe was comprised of? Children instead of professionals?

What the fuck was going on here?

"Samuel," Sagan also knelt down to my right. "This Creator has suffered a concussion. He is of no threat to us anymore. It is recommended that we continue to depart as soon as possible."

I angrily scowled, but I was not entirely sure what I was mad about. Was it the fact that I was being physically threatened, along with my friends and family, or that I had now stooped to the level of assaulting people way too young to be holding weapons? Was it because I had been forced to hurt this kid, given that there had been no other choice for me? Dumb luck, indeed.

"He can still be of use to us," I seethed as I grabbed at the youth's arm, his omni-tool arm, and shook it in front of his visored face. "Hey! Wake up, sleepy-head! I need you to do us a favor."

"Any…thing," the kid croaked, his eyes fluttering weakly. "Just… don't hurt me. I'll… I'll do whatever you… want."

"Yeah, yeah, I promise I won't hurt you anymore if you cooperate. I'm actually sorry for hitting you in the head, but you were in my way. I just need you to get on the horn and say that you've spotted us somewhere on the _third_ floor, not this one. You got that?"

"On… the horn?" the quarian repeated in confusion, body faintly beginning to stir.

"For god's sake," I muttered to myself as I forgot that the colloquialisms I used were not universal, not to mention passé. "Just transmit over your omni-tool that we're somewhere else!"

"O…kay…" the young man agreed. He now moved his hand of his own accord as his omni-tool blazed to life around his arm. "This is… Recon 4," he slurred. "I think… I just saw suspicious activity… near the-,"

Whatever the kid was about to say to relieve the fire off our asses, he never got a chance to say it.

There was a _pop_ , a crackle of breaking glass, and a horrid wrench of punctured metal. One moment I was staring at a maroon visor, watching our temporary prisoner begin to spout his false information, the next he was crumpled and lifeless on the floor, a pool of blood spreading from his ruined head, while my own face had suddenly been misted with a warm liquid. In horror, I pressed my fingers up to my cheeks and barely got a look at the quarian's blood that stained my face before my vision horribly blurred in the next few seconds.

It took what felt like an eternity for me to glance over to where the floor met the open air of the atrium, discovering Eyzn standing before us, a smoking pistol held in a two-handed stance. The barrel of his gun was pointed directly at us, after having dispatched his own soldier with a direct shot to the head. I barely even noticed the nearly headless body at my feet anymore and I shakily stood back up, bloodied face and all.

"What… the fuck did you just _do?!_ " I nearly cried as my hands helplessly gestured to the kid's inert body.

Eyzn narrowed his eyes, not lowering his weapon. "What I had to. Any subordinate who betrays his team deserves to be culled. He sealed his fate the moment he agreed to aid you. Stupid, he should have taken the beating."

"I wasn't going to hurt him any further!" I cried out. "Jesus Christ, man!"

"Don't condescend me, Sam," Eyzn sighed, as rapid footfalls signaled the arrival of more troops behind the man. "We both know that you'd willingly kill if there was no other option, so don't deign to denigrate me for doing so. Now that we're all reunited, I'm only going to tell you once to drop your weapons and to surrender. I believe you have an idea of what will happen if you refuse. You _did_ just get a demonstration of how serious I am, after all."

I had an idea, all right, but my emotional core was begging me not to give into this man's whims while my logical core said to do whatever he said. If I had maybe a little more skill, a little more experience in any forms of fighting, I would have gone for the slain kid's rifle and attempted to shoot the prick standing across the hall.

Yet I knew that it would take an extraordinary amount of luck to pull that off, luck I knew I did not have. If I were to resist, put up a fight, I would probably not just get myself hurt in the process, I would get others hurt too. I could get Nya hurt and I knew I'd never forgive myself if that came to pass.

Defeated, I silently raised my hands up in the recognizable gesture that Eyzn was seeking. The man lowered his weapon, no doubt smirking at his little victory.

Out of the corner of my mouth, I whispered to Nya and Sagan, "Run. Get out of here. You can make it back through the passage."

Nya defiantly stepped closer to me, eyes wide and panicked. "I'm not leaving without you!" she huffed belligerently. "He'll kill you, you know that."

To drive her point home, she withdrew her pistol from her holster, grasping it around the barrel in the universal gesture of placidity, and tossed it far out of arm's reach.

I winced and fractionally drooped my head. "You need to leave. Now."

"Like hell, Sam."

"You're the goal, Nya. Not me. Eyzn'll make sure to keep me alive as a bargaining chip if you're not captured as well."

" _Creator McLeod_ ," Sagan buzzed in my earpiece, " _our window of departure is diminishing. We must leave now if you wish to survive_."

"I will not abandon Sam!" Nya hissed in defiance to the geth.

" _Creator_ -,"

"Go," I urged. "Sagan, you need to leave. Nya will follow you if she wants, but the quarians won't be kind to you. If you have to leave us behind, so be it."

" _That is unwise. Your treatment will not be pleasant_."

"I understand. Now get out of here."

A notable beat passed before the geth spoke again.

" _You will not be abandoned_. _Recommended course of action is to get down_ ," Sagan whispered in our ears before the geth abruptly wheeled about behind us, sprinting so fast with a squeal of heels that everyone had a hard time tracking him.

Shouts erupted from the quarian crowd that had gathered behind Eyzn and a whole host of weapons whirled in the direction of the departing geth. However, Sagan did not bolt for the maintenance passageway as his escape route. Rather, the geth headed directly for the wide window that spanned the length of the tiny hallway, giving the occupants a grand view of the valley. I could scarcely believe what was about to happen, and as Nya and I hit the deck while a few random shots flew over our heads, we merely watched as it happened anyway.

As Sagan reached the window, a few plasma bolts splattered into the window that he was headed toward, cracking and partially melting the glass where the superheated beams struck. Without hesitation, the yellow-armored geth leaped and practically hurled himself at the window, orienting his body so that he smashed through the thick barrier, the weight of the geth parting the glass easily like paper.

For the briefest of instances, past the hurtling spears of gunfire and surrounded by sparkling jagged glass panes, it looked like Sagan was floating in midair.

Then, with a soft tinkle of glass, the geth silently dropped. All the way down the cliff face.

"Son of a bitch!" Eyzn swore, as he and a cadre of followers hurried over to the window to peer over the edge. From their frenzied glances it was apparent that they could not spot the yellow geth that had tumbled out of a window a half mile above ground, despite the synthetic's total lack of camouflage.

How about that. Sagan had managed to escape into the forest below.

"Did that geth just commit suicide?" a trooper asked out loud as he struggled to get a visual on Sagan.

"No, you imbecile," another trooper chastised. "Geth don't commit suicide. They're built to withstand falls from near-orbit. It survived that fall, make no mistake."

"What, and we're not equipped to survive such falls too?" the first man sarcastically quipped.

"All of you shut up!" Eyzn roared, frustrated at how quickly he lost his chance to execute a geth, especially when it had seemed like he had been holding all the cards. The denial of such an opportunity had to be a blow to his confidence, I was sure of it. Stowing his pistol, he pointed at Nya and I with a scornful grunt. "Stand those two up."

Hands roughly grabbed at our arms, bringing us to our feet. Jerking at the collar of my shirt and jacket, I was uncomfortably brought in front of Eyzn, who was eying us with a troubling look. An object dangled from one of the man's hands and he let out a tiny simper as I was shoved to within a couple feet of him.

"Recognize these?" Eyzn sinisterly asked me as he floated the object directly in front of my eyes. "They're the omni-cuffs that you used to bind me back on your ship. I think that it's only fitting that I use them on _you_ now, Sam."

I huffed as I defiantly presented my wrists to be bound. At this point, it was my mission to derive Eyzn of any sort of satisfaction he could glean from my predicament. I just had to make him think that I still held some semblance of control over my predicament. If he had not brought an army along with him, I'd seriously be considering taking him on in a straight-up fight now that we were within arm's reach of each other, despite my brawling skills being a little on the lackluster side.

"Whatever gets you off," I snarled as the cuffs were slapped onto me, while Nya was similarly restrained behind me by two other militia members. "I don't care what you do to me in the end. Just promise me that you won't hurt Nya."

Eyzn crossed his arms with a laugh of disbelief, before letting them dangle at his sides. "You know I cannot promise that," he said to my dismay. "That's something that's completely out of my control. _You_ , on the other hand…"

I did not see the blow coming. Naively, in my bound state, I had assumed that I would be afforded some decency as a prisoner who willingly surrendered. In my blindness, I did not even react even as I began to perceive the fist headed in my direction, oddly convinced that the quarian was showboating, making a statement to demonstrate his power over me.

WHAM!

The punch snapped my head ninety degrees to the right, sending spittle and blood spraying from my mouth in a curved arc. With a gasp, I sunk to a knee, ears ringing and stars flying in my eyes.

 _Under a canvas draped by stone…_

" _NO!_ " I heard Nya scream behind me.

My tongue felt swollen and my eyelids drooped heavily. Suddenly feeling weak, I tried to raise my head to look at Eyzn, my wife, someone, before the next fist smashed into my jaw, propelling me towards the ground.

Blood was now steadily trickling out of the corner of my mouth in a stream. I mumbled around a broken tooth and spat out a shard of enamel that had chipped off. I used my hands, cuffed in front of me, to try to raise myself up, but a sharp kick to my ribs caused me to abandon that plan as I fell with a howl.

… _she showed me what she feared…_

" _No! No! No!_ " Nya cried helplessly. "No, don't hurt him! _Please don't hurt him!"_

"Pick him up!" Eyzn roared to the two subordinates that had previously been holding me in place. I was too dazed and concerned about all the blood dripping from me that it was hard to tell that I was being lifted. My legs failed to take my weight, so I was now being hoisted in an uncomfortable position by two suited aliens while a certifiable maniac stood inches away from my face.

A hand rudely grabbed at my hair, nearly tearing a bunch from their roots, as Eyzn forced me to look straight at him. His eyes glinted cruelly and I could barely perceive his fist cocked back for another strike.

"Nothing to say?" he mockingly questioned, knowing that I did not have the capacity to utter an intelligible syllable.

Before I could answer anyway, Eyzn struck me again, only this time, the men holding me in place were able to prevent me from flopping back down to the ground. My vision doubled and I saw the blood splatter on the ground in front of me grow bigger and bigger, only dimly hearing my wife continue to scream in the background.

" _Stop it!_ " Nya begged tearfully. " _Stop it, Eyzn! Stop hitting him!_ "

… _she sought love and was duly rewarded…_

Eyzn ignored his stepsister as he straightened my head again for another blow. "You dared to lay your hands upon me," he snared in my face. "This is how your insolence is rewarded."

Everything finally darkened as the next punch slammed into the side of my head. It felt like someone had leveled a sack of bricks against me. This was violence on a complete different level than I had been exposed to before. The punches were brutal, never pulled, and my abuser had all the energy he needed to kill me with just his bare fists. Sadly, I had not been knocked into unconscious quite yet as it is very difficult to do so contrary to popular belief. My eyelids had probably swollen shut from the abuse, but I could still feel every inch of agony pummel my body, the wetness of my blood on my lips, my cheeks.

… _for breath quickened, touch deepened, and body continued to yearn…_

Another yank, another hiss of breath from a vocabulator.

"I am merely returning the favor, _bosh'tet_ ," Eyzn's soft voice reached my ears. "You claimed me as your hostage. You humiliated me. Now, I will show your… _wife_ … just how weak you truly are."

Near-blind, the upcoming blows were invisible to me. Eyzn ceased speaking for a while as he heavily breathed as he hurled punches at me with all his strength, each impact occurring seconds apart, still being held in place by the man's goons. My head whipped to and fro, blood staining my teeth red, gushing from my nostrils, welling from cuts upon my face. I could only dredge up meek and timid moans with each impact.

Yet Nya screamed on.

" _NOOO! STOP! STOP!_ "

A hit to my throat. I gagged. Blood flowed.

… _two became one, entwined, intoxicated, cherished…_

" _PLEASE! I BEG YOU! PLEASE!_ "

Something cracked in my cheek. Knuckles smashing against bone. My teeth clipped my tongue. More blood.

… _a cry, a sudden clench, an embrace tightened further…_

" _DON'T KILL HIM! HURT ME! LEAVE HIM ALONE! JUST HURT ME!_ "

 _Nya_ … I wanted to say, dizzy and half-alive, a thick mass drooling from a corner of my mouth. _Don't_ …

Agony flared in my temple from another hit. Miraculously, I could see for the first time in a while. _Bubbles, softly fizzing past my face. A deep well, an ocean. Calm and tranquil._

I heard Nya attempt to cry out again through the long dark but she was unceremoniously cut off by a harsh sounding slapping noise, eliciting a painful " _AGH!_ " from her. My heart surged. Who hit her?! Who just signed their death warrant by laying their hands on my wife?!

" _You'll be quiet_ ," a silken voice crept in that I recognized as Kraana's, to my horror. " _Or we'll slit your lover's throat from ear to ear._ "

"Fuckin'… bitch…" I managed to moan past a mouthful of blood and cracked teeth. It was such an effort to force my eyes to open even a crack, causing the aquatic images to vanish abruptly, but could now perceive Eyzn standing before me, with Kraana standing next to a sagging and retching Nya, who had apparently planted a fist into my wife's gut.

"He speaks!" Eyzn crowed in delight, his knuckles painted red. "A survivor indeed."

"Notice how he only reacted just now?" Kraana chuckled as she painfully grabbed the back of Nya's head, wrenching her skull this way and that, turning my blood into magma. "He's holding on for her."

"How interesting," Eyzn said as he tenderly touched my ruined cheek. "Yet… very obvious."

… _whispers of her truest desire met my ear, in a union of sweat and skin, our mouths devoured simultaneously…_

Despite my wish for the man beating me up to die in the most painful manner conceivable, I wanted nothing more than to be let off the handle so that I could rip Kraana into a thousand pieces for striking Nya. Who hits a bound woman?! Her stepdaughter, no less?! There was no redemption for Kraana anymore after this. My fists curled, seeking to tear into muscle and sinew as an inhuman growl forced its way past my ruined throat. Eyzn noted this and laughed, glancing at his mother as he did so.

"Still some fight in this man," he chuckled admiringly as he reached out and gently began to pat my head, to my surprise. "Amazing. You're shaping up to be everything that I hoped from a human like you. I do admire you, Sam, but… you _did_ deal me a dirty blow earlier that was unbecoming of you. It's disappointing that I have to return the favor, but I'm only finishing what you started. I'm sure you'll understand in the end."

I was in so much pain that Eyzn's words went in one ear and out the other with their meaning only imparting onto me much later, after the blow had been delivered. It was only when Eyzn stepped forward and slammed a knee up into my groin did I fully realize what my actions had earned.

There is nothing in the universe that can replicate the pain of being hit in the groin. Nothing. There is a lull after the initial hit before the pain overwhelms you that gives you just enough time to realize what has happened. This is usually when all the panicked thoughts rush to the forefront of your head as you try to anticipate the agony that is about to spectacularly blossom.

But it _cannot_ be anticipated. The explosion of electric pressure is so intense that simply imagining it is an impossibility.

It is pain in every sense of the word. Total, immobilizing pain.

You can't move. You can't breathe. You can't do anything except clutch the affected area and drop to the ground like a stone (which I would have were I not still being held aloft in the clutches of a couple quarian bastards). Your motor skills fail, your muscles lock up, and then the pain spreads all over your body in slow, undulating waves. You are suffering so badly that death begins to really seem like a practical alternative. It is the ultimate weak point for males – a direct hit to the area guarantees a complete capitulation of one's foe.

After a few seconds of enduring this excruciating torture, my body decided that it had finally had enough and decided to quit. I was in such a banged up state that this final lasting blow had finally pushed me over the edge in terms of my threshold for pain tolerance. I can only recall my final thought being a desire to die, if only to end the pain, and Nya softly sobbing in the background as she beheld me in my ruined state.

With a final gasp, I mercifully blacked out, but not before a raw burst of fury bloomed inside of me for Nya having to see me so battered once more.

… _she found what she had been searching for._

* * *

I was not out of it for very long, apparently. The body is very resistant to being knocked unconscious and does everything in its power to try and rouse itself back to some semblance of understanding and perception. No doubt it was running overtime trying to get everything back into working order while I was in the middle of my quick nap.

I can vaguely recall being carried down several flights of stairs, and through several twists and turns that comprised the complex's maze of hallways, but that was where the majority of my stimulation came from. It was only after I dimly heard the sound of a door being opened and felt the faint brush of wind upon my face did I realize that I was back outside.

Groggily, I lidded my eyes open, blinking several times to adjust to the light of the morning sun. After being dragged out in the open for a bit, the group that had me in their clutches was finally shadowed by a gigantic object that towered several stories above our heads.

Even in my sorry state, I still could recognize the large shuttlecraft that Iroa had initially arrived to meet us in standing right before me once more. With that logic, I deduced that we must be on a landing platform of some kind, one that jutted from the vertical cliff to balance above the expansive tree line. Were I in a more alert mood I would have questioned the decision to precariously place a seemingly flimsy load-bearing structure nearly half a mile above solid ground, but the best that I could muster were vagaries and overt simplifications.

" _I want to have this one alone for myself!_ " I heard the hated Eyzn's voice float into my consciousness, rendered nearly unintelligible as I roasted in the baking sun and the wavering heat. " _You can stow the other near the back._ "

 _You touch Nya, and I'll rip your heart out_ , I wanted to say, but I could only gargle through a mucus and blood congested mouth.

I was so concentrated on drawing on all the strength I could muster from my pitiful state that I nearly missed the hidden meaning that Eyzn had inadvertently revealed. He had only mentioned one "other." As in singular. Nya had been the only other person taken along with me, so did that mean that these guys did not manage to snag Rie and Chandler? I hoped they were all right. These quarians most likely abandoned their pursuit of my friends once they had their main targets in their clutches - us. At least they would be safe, which actually was quite assuring.

Audible cues of footsteps quickly indicated to me that someone was now standing directly in front of me. Not that I could do much about it – I was still having trouble seeing and my body was still being led around while I was teetering in my semi-conscious state. It was not hard to guess who this person was, believe it or not.

"Where…" I moaned past cracked lips. "Nya…"

"Oh, she's around," Eyzn's voice said nastily while the wind blustered around us. "Very much in a better state than you, obviously. Don't worry, we'll have you back on your feet soon, cleaned up and ready to go. It wouldn't do us any good to broadcast the fact that we torture our captives, would it?"

"Why… couldn't you just… leave us… alone?"

Eyzn gave a low chuckle at my pathetic words. "There's a certain principle about this whole thing that would be lost on you. More like, you probably wouldn't want to hear my position upon us being here. Iroa wants his daughter, fine, but I don't see why I can't get something out of this either. Honestly, our involvement in this so-called civil war is nothing but a farce, yet it was the explanation that had the best chance at believability. You probably already knew that, though."

I then felt a hand roughly grab my chin, forcing my head to look upwards at my tormentor, in spite of the fact that it was still difficult for me to see through puffy eyelids.

"You'll come to find that you are valuable in your own right. Everyone has their pressure points and you happen to be just the-,"

"COVER!" a new voice screamed out in a panic, one of the many 'soldiers.'

Immediately, the hands holding my arms at the shoulders let go, letting me drop heavily onto the ground, causing me to expel a few weak coughs from the impact. Multiple thumps from bodies hitting the deck sounded all around me, leaving a few seconds of pure silence, other than the whistle of wind against rock, before a shattering rapid series of pulses splintered the air and sent shock waves rippling through the lot of us.

Electric oscillations screeched before the rending of molten metal and erupting hydrogen joined the cacophony. My vision managed to focus just in time to catch the tail end of thousands of bright blue beams solidly impacting onto the upper right shuttle engine, puncturing it and creating a blue mushroom cloud as the He-3 fuel lines were exposed to both the fire and oxygen simultaneously. Arcs of lightening briefly sparked into existence, flaring out to leave the engine a smoldering wreck. The shuttle itself was intact, but with only one of two engines functional, it was clear that the craft would not be lifting off anytime soon.

From where I had perceived the white-hot projectiles to be originating from, I managed to crane my head (despite the new pain creaking up my spine) so that I was able to behold a yellow-armored figure standing upon a ledge several meters above us with a fearsome looking gun cradled in their hands.

It only took one glance for a smile to finally break across my face.

Sagan!

That magnificent bastard, I thought happily, silently mustering a weak, singular laugh.

By now, the majority of the quarians had realized that there was a hiatus in the firing and they had snapped back up to level their own shots in kind back at the geth. However, Sagan had quickly vanished through the opening he had initially come through, harmlessly getting out of the way of the wall of bullets that was currently proceeding to shatter the impassive rock face, generating a rain of dust.

Eyzn swore next to me, and I reveled in his anger. Just when it looked like things had been going the man's way, a geth, no less, had to show up and completely wreck everything in less than ten seconds. He had his hostages, but no way to get them off-planet. For the moment, it looked like we were all stuck here.

A squad immediately hustled into the shuttle to procure the necessary firefighting equipment while Eyzn raged at the remaining stragglers.

"Get these _bosh'tets_ into the ship!" he roared. "And someone kill that damn geth!"

Leaving me little time to worry about Sagan's safety, I was hoisted once again to be dragged into the bowels of this craft, to await whatever my tormentor had in store for me.

* * *

Iroa was very uneasy as he trundled through the main hallway of the shuttle as members of his cadre pushed past him, scrambling to get the main propulsion systems working again. Reality had a way of transpiring in a starkly different manner than what he had been expecting. He had thought that the next time he would set foot upon his own ship that he would be full of pride, welcoming home a daughter instead of trudging around like a warrior returning from a defeat in battle. In many ways, he could not call this a victory; his daughter was livid at him, his stepson was out of control, and now his shuttle had been rendered inoperable indefinitely.

How in any way was he to be assuaged by this?

Everything had all gone wrong since he landed on the planet, Iroa realized. Not only did Nyareth fail to accept him immediately, to his shock, she had openly resisted along with that willful husband of hers. Sadly, the truth of his status as an absentee father had been thrown in his face _ad nauseum_ , and no excuse that he could conjure could cause that label to go away, shaming him to no end. It was true, he had never been a father to that woman at all and he might never get that chance, at the rate things were going. It very much seemed that Nyareth had lost what little confidence she had in him, if it had not been stamped out after what happened today.

Rumblings from the nearby crew denoted a sorry state of affairs. The geth that had allied itself with Nyareth and Sam had appeared for the briefest of moments, but had dealt a particularly precise and grievous blow to prevent them from departing this forsaken place. The engines were capable of being repaired, but Iroa despised lingering here any longer than necessary. It was all up to the engineers to get this thing space-worthy again, but there was no telling how long that was going to take.

What a gigantic foul-up this was.

He caught a glimpse of Kraana as she was about to make her way past him but a single look was all it took for him to forcibly grab her arm and to shove her into an adjacent room. Bins and shelves clattered as the two quarians stumbled around the storage room, almost tripping on boxes that lined a narrow path. Iroa stood in front of the doorway, trapping Kraana in with him as he very carefully considered his next words to her.

"Really, Iroa?" Kraana chortled bitterly as she appraised Iroa's weary eyes, seductively sashaying her hips in a mocking fashion. "Right now? The timing's a bit off, but if you insist-,"

"Shut up," Iroa hissed as he forcefully pressed Kraana against the wall, cutting her off. "Just shut your mouth. I _told_ you that you didn't need to force Nyareth to come with us and what do you do? You had your son beat her husband nearly to death and you personally cracked one of her ribs! I warned you that I _did not want her hurt!_ "

To her credit, Kraana did not even attempt to struggle out of Iroa's grip. "I don't see any issue at all, frankly," she coldly replied. "You have your daughter now, isn't that what you wanted? They were never going to come along with us willingly, you know that. Eyzn and I simply happened to be on the same wavelength – they were never going to go along with your plan unless we forced them to. The fact that we had to resort to violence is regrettable, but-,"

Iroa savagely pounded his fist an inch away from Kraana's head, causing her to flinch ever so subtly. She blinked her eyes once, slowly, regretting that she even showed a hint of fear in front of her husband.

"You don't regret a thing!" Iroa roared. "You wanted this from the beginning! You've never cared about Nyareth at all! This whole time, you've been preventing me from even having a chance at mending bridges with my daughter by sabotaging each and every encounter with violence! And after you've been lying to my face, pretending that you wanted to look upon her as a daughter! Why, Kraana? Why do you hate her so much?"

Now Kraana finally slapped Iroa's hands aside, like she would for a child.

"Why?" Kraana sarcastically repeated with a disbelieving laugh. "Are you blind? What do you think the answer is going to be? For years on end, I've had to listen to you continually orate on about bringing your family back together, but you've failed to consider _my_ opinion on what was essentially a goal to upstage the son you've had. Did you really think that I would not find fault in your logic? How exactly did you think I would take this crusade of yours – reuniting with your so-called daughter – while this whole time, you have had Eyzn at your side?"

"Eyzn isn't my child!"

"That's it right there!" Kraana practically shrieked as she viciously pointed a finger at Iroa. "You've had someone near you for such a long time, looking for nothing but your approval, and yet you continuously spurn him throughout your search for your daughter. It's just that the past few days have finally revealed your hypocrisy, your naked intentions are as clear as they've ever been! Eyzn's been more loyal to you than Nyareth could ever be, and he's demonstrated this time and again. _He_ deserves your attention, not her!"

Iroa slowly shook his head, his eyes never straying from Kraana's. "That option was never on the table."

At that, Kraana shook for but a moment, her eyes narrowing into slits.

"Eyzn will hate you forever if you betray him like this. _I_ will hate you forever."

"I've told you that this was my intention from the very beginning. If you misconstrued my motives, I apologize but I am not to blame. I'm not going to turn my back on the family that I was forced to abandon. I can't just leave her, not now. I've seen what she is capable of – Nyareth is just like her mother: stronger and smarter than-,"

"Than… who?" Kraana interrupted, cutting Iroa off abruptly. "Than you? Than… _Eyzn?_ "

Not knowing exactly what to say in order to appease his wife, Iroa merely fell silent, subject to Kraana's scathing gaze. The dark-suited woman seemingly towered over him in a rage, her own breathing coming out in a faint sibilation from her vocabulator as her eyes finally blended into her snow visor.

After Iroa's chance at explaining himself came and went, Kraana was left to chuckle ominously.

"So… that's how it is, then," was her simple reply. "You really do believe, even after spending less than a day with her, that Eyzn is inferior to your daughter. Perhaps Nyareth really did have a point, you know nothing about the term 'loyalty.' If this is what you want, fine. But know this, Iroa, I will make sure that before long, Nyareth will understand just how deep your loyalty to your family runs and that retaliation… does not always strike back upon the inflictor."

"You wouldn't…" Iroa shakily protested as Nya impassively pushed him out of the way and walked back toward the hallway to leave him alone in the empty room of boxes. "You cannot hurt Nyareth, Kraana. I will not allow it!"

Kraana halted in the middle of the bustling hallway, crewmembers running around her like a river flowing around a rock. She turned to face Iroa, her stance completely calm and collected, her eyes lidded upward as if she were shooting Iroa a sinister smile.

"You might find that your bidding carries less and less weight, husband. Besides, I would never harm a hair on Nyareth's pretty little head… unless you continue to deny Eyzn's familial right."

Iroa quietly fumed, his hands quickly wrapping into fists. Kraana's laugh was silent to all but herself and she gracefully turned as she angled her head back for one last word.

"Think it over, why don't you?"

* * *

There was a feeling of a thick liquid on my face, like a cream, and then a kind of fuzzy yet numbing sensation started to sink into every pore on my face. Groaning, I shook my head and tried to raise my arms, but something was preventing me from doing so.

I then realized that I had been bound. Not very comfortably, as it turned out.

The more I was able to perceive, the direr my situation was turning out. To my confusion, I was only wearing my pants, with my jacket and shirt apparently having been ripped off and discarded. I was lying on a slightly padded table at an incline, with thick straps holding my legs and arms down. Electrodes had been stuck onto my bare chest, connected to what appeared to be an EKG machine softly beeping in the background. A brace snaked across my waist, keeping me attached to the table, but that wasn't even the worst of what reality had to offer me.

No, because the piece de resistance of this entire restraint package was the black and heavy mask that had been placed over my nose and mouth, like a muzzle. Three straps wrapped around my head to converge upon a singular locked point, preventing me from biting my captors should they get careless and stick their fingers where they were not supposed to. The mask rubbed uncomfortably where the airtight seals stuck against my skin, and I tried moving my jaw to break the firm enclosure to no avail.

Three fingers then suddenly patted my cheek, causing me to jump as much as I could within my bindings, as Eyzn stepped around the table, a knowing glint behind that ocean-blue visor.

"Rise and shine, Sam," he greeted a little too enthusiastically for my taste. "I trust that is the correct human saying for this sort of occasion? I've been brushing up a bit, in case you couldn't tell."

"You're acting like I could possibly give a fuck," I growled, the mask making my already horrendous sounding voice even more muffled. My eyes blazed fury as I imagined myself as a caged animal, just waiting for the right amount of slack in my restraints so that I could make a critical strike.

I did note, to my surprise, that although I was not at all comfortable, that the injuries that I had accrued to my face, courtesy of Eyzn, were not splitting my head apart with pain. I even craned my neck a couple times, deliberately trying to draw out the agony that I was sure was waiting to well up from the multitude of bruises and cuts accumulated within the last half hour. Yet, there was nothing.

Eyzn merely made a " _Hmph!_ " as he prodded my forehead with a finger. I winced, more from the contact than from any pain, despite there being none to perceive.

"The medi-gel has certainly done a good job on you," he moved on. "I'm afraid I couldn't do much to that cracked tooth of yours, but you'll be glad to know that you'll be looking normal in a matter of minutes."

"If you believe for one second that I'm going to thank you, you're gravely mistaken," I drawled, my eyes the only part of my body expressing the totality of my dark side to Eyzn.

As the quarian turned, I could see that he was fiddling with a small object in his hands. As I realized what he was holding, I surged in my restraints, eyes bulging at the sockets.

" _Where did you get that?_ " I hissed.

Eyzn pretended to not hear me for a moment. "Oh, this?" I mockingly replied as he lifted my father's wood pipe up. "Found it in a drawer on your ship while you were out. Curious little object. This is a… smoking pipe, is it not?"

"Give that to me," I gnashed my teeth with each word.

"I don't think so," Eyzn simpered. "Not yet. Why would you ever carry around such a trinket? Sentimental value, perhaps?"

"It was my father's."

"Ah, I see. Didn't think that you smoked, anyway."

"I used to. Not anymore."

"Made the right choice, I guess," Eyzn mused as he held the pipe up to the light, inspecting the polished wood and admiring the golden highlights near the stem. "Very lovely craftsmanship, though. Your father's, you said? Hmm, he was a man of fine taste. Don't worry, I see you looking at me. You'll have this back eventually, when I'm done with it."

"No," I growled. "I'll be taking it back from you by force, count on that."

"I'm sure you will," Eyzn snorted. "But you might be less sure of your exaggerated abilities once we really get started here."

"Cut the crap, you prick. Where is Nya?"

"Oh, she's around," Eyzn said airily as he pocketed the pipe. "Truth be told, I'm not sure where exactly on this ship, but she's here. No doubt about it."

"Bring her to me," I commanded.

Eyzn laughed at that. "Now _you're_ mistaken if you believe that you're in a position to be giving orders. If you're at all concerned for the welfare of your wife, I can attest that, despite a singular blow to her sternum, she unharmed. For the time being."

An unnatural combination between a growl and a hiss boiled from my throat, and my body slowly rose from the table as far as it could go in its bound state.

"For…the time being," I repeated glassily. "You mean that you wish to hurt her eventually?"

"I'm not saying that it will happen. I'm just saying that such a possibility is not entirely off the table."

"So what has to happen for you to take it off said table?"

Eyzn could only shrug. "I'm not sure, exactly. I'm afraid that decision is not completely up to me. At this point, there's nothing that you can do to help her, considering the… ah, circumstances."

If this mask weren't blocking my expressions, I'd bet that Eyzn would have shrunk in fear if he could only gaze upon the grimace my lips were frozen in. My upper torso leaned further outward, sweat glistening upon my chest as my breathing became heavier, more trance-like.

"Consider these circumstances, then," I snarled. "Were I not trussed up like a turkey, I would turn you into a quadriplegic so messily that you would be begging me to snap your neck by the very end."

In a flash, Eyzn's visor came so close to my muzzled face that, if my neck had any more leeway, I would have the ability to deliver one serious headbutt to this asshole. Unfortunately, he and I both knew of my physical impotence at this state, so the danger to anyone else inside this room was minimal.

"Sam… Sam," the quarian clucked, "your continued usage of bravado is laudable, but ultimately predictable and therefore boring. Must you delve into cliché every time things do not line up for you?"

"You should try it sometime," I smirked. "I find that it helps keep me sane."

"If you say so. Besides, you and I both know that if we were to break into an all-out brawl, you'd find yourself surprised at your standing. After all, we hardly need a repeat of what happened back at that complex, do we?"

"Huh, pardon _me_ for assuming that you people would have some shred of honor," I spat. "Where I come from, you don't beat up surrendered prisoners just because the fancy strikes you."

Eyzn threw his head back and bellowed one deep note of laughter before he proceeded to pace around the table, his head always tracking mine.

"It is a foolish thing, to assume that the laws you lived under somehow carry over to other worlds, other civilizations. You may think that forcing your physical submission was a break against 'honor,' but you fail to realize that my people had been fighting for centuries a race that had no understanding of honor whatsoever. You mosey around with a geth, somehow believing that it trusts you, when you've never had to witness their kind _slaughtering_ my people – people who surrendered to them and were killed outright anyway. We've simply learned to push back after being offered no leeway. With that in mind, you are lucky that I didn't simply execute you outright, since it is technically in my nature to do so."

"Then that's your excuse for brutally executing that kid back there? Your own kind, carelessly discarded? It's in your nature to _murder?_ How _old_ was he, Eyzn?"

The quarian momentarily glanced at his suited fingers, as if he was imagining the weapon that he had handled minutes ago.

"Old enough," was his reply. "He knew the consequences yet would have assisted you in your escape anyway."

"Then that's what your little 'army' is comprised of? Kids? You're in command of your very own Children's Crusade?"

Eyzn elicited a frustrated sigh. "It's so easy for you to paint us in a negative light, isn't it, Sam? Perhaps it never occurred to you that this entire company had been put together and mandated by the _esteemed_ Admiral Xen. Perhaps it just doesn't sink in for you that the last war left so many orphans in its wake with nowhere to go. Men and woman of all ages suddenly left parentless. That kind of trauma scars children for life, you know, and many of them tend to act out in reckless ways. A lot of them wish to make themselves useful by joining the service, and when you have hundreds of young conscripts, some as early as 14 years old, begging to be put to use, it is very hard to say no to them. This way, the kids are given purpose, they gain a family, bigger than before. Yet all you choose to see is a perversion of the charity we are accomplishing here."

"Probably because you govern these children as if they're adults when they're nowhere close. Like you said, they're young, impulsive, and reckless. They don't understand or appreciate the fact that fighting isn't a game. They don't have the experience to realize that this is dangerous for them, yet you casually kill them simply for disobeying orders under duress."

"Then they've learned a lesson from today. Sometimes you need to set an extreme example if you wish to get everyone to fall in line."

My glare barely softened through the man's diatribe. "If you really believe that bullshit, then we've nothing left to say."

"I knew you wouldn't understand. Doesn't matter, anyway. The past is the past and we can only concentrate on the future."

The man then walked over to the table that held a litany of medical equipment, pretended to be indecisive about which instrument to pick, before he grabbed a tube attached to a metallic tank, and stretched it over to where I lay. Eyzn brought the tube over to my head and with a twist and a series of clicks, locked into place upon a port on my mask.

"Giving me nitrous oxide?" I quipped as Eyzn stepped back to place his hand upon the valve. "Now you're just spoiling me."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Sam," Eyzn said. "This is just one of the many ways that us quarians utilize in order to pacify individuals we perceive to be violent and out of control. That mask you have on there simply acts as a medium for inhalation of this compound that you're about to receive. No syringes aboard this ship, quarians have no use for them. We've found that the people that we administer this mixture to become docile and thus easy to handle aboard crowded spaces."

"Better hope that is a levo mix, then. A dextro compound is just going to poison me."

"Don't worry, I accounted for that. It's a good thing that there are many equivalent analogues in nature that replicate many of the same chemical effects that are present in this compound. In essence, this is a completely levo-form of my relaxant gas."

"Oh, I'm glad that I'm staking my life upon your mad science project," I snarkily retorted. "This isn't as esoteric to me as you might think, Eyzn. I do work in the medical industry, remember? I can understand the chemistry jargon. Level with me, professional to professional, what exactly is this gas going to do to me?"

"Let's see, hmm," Eyzn mused as his eyes scrunched up. "If I remember my human biology correctly, this compound acts as both an agonist and an antagonist for several chemicals in your brain, putting your nervous system into a less active state. I believe that this mixture is going to inhibit your nicotinic acetylcholine receptors while simultaneously activating your D2 receptors, among other effects. Was that understandable enough for you?"

It was, come to think of it, but I was so utterly dumbstruck at Eyzn's description of his compound that it took several seconds for me to come up with anything approaching a complete thought. His lingering sarcastic wisecrack was even lost on me as I tried to make heads of tails of the sheer clusterfuck that was the man's best description of his own handiwork.

I coughed, not from the gas, but in disbelief. "Where the hell did _you_ learn your trade?" I rasped incredulously, very much scrambling for additional words to insult the quarian with. "Are you certain that this gas is going to have the effect you want?"

Eyzn laughed, misunderstanding my tone. "You speak as if you're somewhat of an expert on the effects chemicals have upon the human brain."

"I _do_ have a doctorate from Johns Hopkins. Neuroscience _was_ on my list of required courses during my attendance. So… I do think that my level of expertise is greater than yours, unless you happen to have a PhD from an accredited university."

"Well, consider this a lesson on not to continually underestimate your superiors," Eyzn said with finality as he began to crank the valve. Now, I could feel a rush of gas against my nose and mouth, and against my better nature, I inhaled, crinkling my nostrils at the sterile scent.

"I think that you're going to be disappointed," I mused with melancholy.

"We'll see," Eyzn chuckled nastily as he continued to open the valve a little bit at a time. "Now, I did forget to mention earlier that this compound does give rise to intense hallucinations once it reaches the brain. Just fair warning in case you begin to see images that are a little… odd."

"These hallucinations, they're a side effect?" I asked as fuzzy tendrils already began to tug at the corner of my brain. "Among others, I'd expect."

The quarian just nodded in glee as he reclined the table carrying me. "Among others," he confirmed as he gave the valve a final, fierce twist, sending a flood of gas my way as the tap opened in full.

* * *

"This isn't going to work," I remember saying right before the makeshift laboratory, as well as Eyzn, vanished and I felt myself whisked away upon a bright swirl of kaleidoscopic light.

Already the hallucinations were taking hold. Seems this was less of a side effect and more of an _intended_ effect.

It felt like I was falling and remaining in place at the same time – not floating, but being stuck in a fixed point, unable to move while light mingled, fire danced, and galaxies collided around me. I very much would have liked to enjoy the show, but as quickly as this fever dream began, it abruptly ended as gravity yanked me downward with a solid tug, for my feet to briefly meet a solid surface before sinking about an inch or two into sand.

Instinctively, I looked down at my feet. Indeed, I was standing atop an expanse of golden sand, much like the one you'd find at…

…A beach? I looked up just in time for the remnants of a wave surging up to lap at my heels. The water was cold, too frigid to swim in, and the surf departed without giving me a care in the world, leaving only a thin layer of froth upon the now dampened sand.

This place… the ocean… it was all so familiar.

No. It couldn't be. I couldn't be here again.

But it had to be. The rolling fog up off the glass surface, the white spray against towering cliffs, echoing roar from the inlaid cove, and the shattered guardrail several dozen meters above where I stood. I had been here before, but this was not just a dream for me. Somehow, everything was feeling more… tangible. More real.

The grit between my toes felt rough, like I could imagine every single grain wedged between my skin. The sun piercing the clouds was hot, actually burning me as I stood out in the open. Even the waves, another of which returned to soak my lower legs, even they felt like I was actually standing in the sea. This level of sensation was more tangible than I ever had realized before. This was different. Something had changed.

Yet… if this was the same beach as in my dreams, then wouldn't that mean…?

A crunch of sand, a snap of a twig, and I finally turned around, back towards the mainland. A greenish-colored figure stood in the way of a grassy, bushed incline, their initial presence raising confusion within me.

Before I had a chance to react, the figure reached behind him and threw an object at my feet. The knife glinted brilliantly in the sun, its worn grip beckoning me to reach out and touch the leathery surface. The jagged edge of the blade scraped a thin layer from the beach's surface, spreading out a fine coating of magnificent pebbles upon its rippled and polished face.

Tuning the noise of the waves out, the feel of the ocean breeze at my back, I slowly tilted my head upward, dreading what was to happen next.

Mere feet away, Vhen pointed at the knife he deposited at my feet.

"Pick it up," he ordered.

In the next moment, the dream became real.

* * *

 **A/N: Things are going to get a little crazy in the next chapter, so buckle your seatbelts. I might have a few things that I need to take care of next week, so the next chapter might be delayed a couple days - not that long.**

 **Hope you guys are enjoying what's been going on now that we've gotten into the action. If you really like the story or have an idea on what could be improved, be sure to drop a review - I genuinely appreciate constructive criticism.**

 **At the rate these chapters keep expanding, this might just have the potential to be my largest story yet (in terms of word count).**

 **Apartment Run (Eyzn Theme Incantation II): "First Regression" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_. Kurzel's use of texture makes for a visceral listening experience which continues the theme of utilizing un-melodic cues to represent characters in this story. You can actually feel the tense pace based on how quickly the ensemble is playing.**

 **Eyzn Pummels: "Hello Mommy" by Marc Streitenfeld from the film _Prometheus_. The soundtrack to this film is actually very intelligently and thoughtfully constructed, with Streitenfeld reprising the classic "Alien" theme from the original 1979 film. He also is skilled at creating a superb horror palate, which is faithfully and frighteningly demonstrated with the "Hello Mommy" cue - perfect for representing anger and fear while Eyzn is busy brutalizing Sam. (Which is the cue that is playing during the infamous "alien abortion" scene in the film - scary stuff!)**

 **Back into the Dream: "Payload Deployment" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien: Covenant_. Speaking of the _Alien_ films, _Covenant_ just came out this weekend (not the best film ever, but certainly entertaining - I recommend it) with Mr. Kurzel scoring it in what has to be one of the finest horror scores ever conjured. It is simultaneously horrifying and beautiful, and this cue certainly captures the dread Sam is going through after Eyzn starts to gas him. Give the soundtrack a listen on YT, it's incredible.**


	14. Chapter 14: The Moribund Procession

_Aberration Sequence #1_  
 _Big Sur, CA 20XX, 8:39 AM_

There was a scraping thump, and a sharp object glittered at my feet.

"Pick it up," Vhen taunted, his body twisting back after having thrown the knife in my direction.

Gulls screeched in the air. The waves did not pay heed to us on the beach, proceeding as normal with its tidal movement. The air was cold, chilled from the previous night. In the distance, a sea lion frightfully barked, already anticipating the onslaught that was to come.

This time, I did not hesitate.

With a growl worthy of a lion's, I reached down and plucked the blade from the sand and ran at full tilt toward the hated quarian. I'm not sure if Vhen was not expecting me to rise to the challenge, or maybe not as quickly, for he hastily began to backpedal, his eyes widening as I rapidly closed the gap.

Vhen could have had the advantage, but after he hesitated in the wake of my anger, it was too late for him to do anything. I had been wanting to do this for so long and the fool finally deposited the one chance at my feet. Him or me. I knew that my own indecision would mean my death. Now that I truly understood what the stakes were, there was no turning back for me.

Three quick strides later and I was within arm's reach. Vhen still had not drawn a weapon. Howling, I plunged my hand forward and the knife sunk through Vhen's omni-suit and into his chest. The cold metal slid between the quarian's ribs easily, piercing his heart and cleaving it nearly in two. Vhen made a soft wheeze, not a cry of pain, the inside of his visor faintly misting with blood, and he sunk down to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut. I continued to hold onto the hilt, yanking it this way and that, opening the gaping wound in Vhen wider and wider. Steel chewed flesh, making mincemeat out of what had been untarnished muscle.

Such brutality was unnecessary, I would come to learn. Vhen was already dead, lifeless from the moment the knife tore into his heart. After I ripped the knife out of Vhen, I looked at the bloodstained weapon then to the hole in the quarian's body. Blood was not gushing in geyser-like bursts from the open wound, but merely leaking in a slow trickle. An obvious sign that the quarian's heart was no longer beating and circulating blood throughout his body. Vhen's head rolled limply to the side, eyes glassy behind his visor, but his body continued to sit upright on the soft, golden sand, as if he had merely exhausted himself from a long run.

With a gasp, I dropped the knife, the weapon initially sticking to my sweat-laden palm for a couple seconds. I had done it. It did not matter that this was a dream or some hallucinogenic fantasy, but I had done it nonetheless. I had finally killed Vhen, the bastard that had tried to drive a wedge in between Nya and me ever since I had known him, and who had taken my hand back in London just because he had not gotten his way. This was merely my way of paying him back all this time, since I had never gotten to kill him myself, never mind my hesitant stance about not killing people – this was one person that rightfully deserved it.

Breath fluctuating in my throat, a bout of anxiety suddenly gripped me, a lingering fear that whispered for me to not relax just yet. Somehow, I found myself agreeing.

I had to make sure.

Arm outstretched, I gingerly approached Vhen's body, half of which was now stained red from the quarian's dark blood. I bit my lip as I grasped the top of Vhen's helmet and slightly nudged it to the side, just to check if he was still alive.

Apparently I needn't have worried, because Vhen's head just limply flopped in whatever direction I led it. He was dead, for certain.

I exhaled in relief, now certain that I had checked all the boxes with regards to murdering a person. Even in this odd plane of existence, I was not at all concerned at the aftermath. I still had some semblance of where I truly was – this was not one of those situations where I would have to worry about disposing the body and what not. I knew that my real consciousness was hovering in some dreamlike state aboard a shuttle on an alien planet far away from here. Until I somehow managed to pull my way out from this purgatory, I could at least attempt to suspend my disbelief for a little bit.

My hands were still shaking as I trudged away from the beach, up a beaten dirt path to the road overhead. Perhaps it was starting to hit me that I had really killed a person, despite it being imaginary. Stabbing Vhen had certainly _felt_ real, no denying that. There was definitely an impact and an opposite force that prevented me from sticking that blade all the way into his heart, but this was all in my head! Did this really count if it felt real, yet I knew for a fact that it was not? Despite the knowledge I had that all I could see at this moment was merely a fiction created inside my head, why did I feel so sick to my stomach?

"It's over," I breathed to myself in an effort to calm my racing nerves as I brushed past a stringy shrub, sending a flock of quail scattering. "You can relax. It's all over."

" _No_. _It has only just begun, human_ ," a throaty voice rasped behind me.

 _Vhen's_ voice.

Impossible.

No. He's dead. I confirmed it for myself. I stabbed him in the _heart_ , for Christ's sake!

Whirling with both shock and hate, determined to do the job right this time, I prepared to lunge for the knife that I had dropped once again so that I could dissect Vhen into a thousand tiny pieces.

That was not what greeted me.

 _-Light, poised in beautiful contrails and spheres, swirled and beckoned-_

Instead of a reanimated corpse trundling about, an explosion of light flashed across my retinas before I could focus properly, momentarily scorching my face and making it feel like I had just been rapidly sunburned. I was blinded and I sunk to my knees, surprised by the sudden pain. But as quickly as the light had come, it died, unveiling a spectacular site before me… and a completely new setting.

"Holy…" I uttered, unable to finish the sentence.

 _Aberration Sequence #2  
_ _Village of Castelgard, Dordogne Region, France, 1357, 7:13 AM_

I was not on the beach anymore. In fact, there was no more beach to be seen. A chorus of yells erupted from all sides, all screaming songs of war, causing me to stagger in a dizzy manner momentarily after I had finished rising back up to my feet. My legs felt heavy as they now trod across trampled grass instead of sand, black mud squishing up to my ankles. The rising sun speared through a horizon of trees, fluttering into my eyes and causing me to blink rapidly.

What the hell…?

As I came to my senses, I did that sort of double-take that only results when you've been well and completely bamboozled. Anyone in my position would have done the same.

A green and brown field, occasionally spotted with mud pits, now greeted me in place of the deep blue sea and golden sand of a beach. Hints of morning fog wisped near the tree line that bordered the grassy expanse, a few patches of untrimmed pasture still beaded with dew. I then went a little near-sighted in my shock, still not fully comprehending why or how I got here, which meant that I disregarded the multitude of vivid colors all swirling about in the background, many voices simultaneously chanting and screaming with the clanging percussion of steel upon steel as a harsh accompaniment.

The temperature was chilly, icy knives driving at the skin. I brought my hands to my chest to rub them for warmth.

But my hands did not meet skin or any soft clothing. They did not even reach my body. They were limited by the cold metal mesh that enclosed my arms. It was only then did I realize that gloves adorned my hands… but these were not just any old gloves.

Dumbfounded, I looked down at myself.

The clothes I had been wearing before had vanished. In their place was an entire bodysuit made completely of chainmail. Atop the chainmail, elaborately formed iron plates covered my body, creating a complete suit out of the heavy metal.

Almost like a… no, it couldn't be…

On my legs, sabatons covered my feet – riveted iron plates melded to my boots. Greaves wreathed my calves and ankles, poleyns protected my knees, and cuisses wrapped around my thighs.

Upon my arms, besagues – small miniature shields – were laced to the chainmail to defend my armpits. Rerebraces and vambraces coated my upper and lower arms. Ringed metal plates covered each individual finger, my gauntlets, creating a shining and impenetrable limb. A literal iron fist. I could probably punch a brick wall with these on and have the _wall_ actually be the one to come out worse for the wear.

A breast and back plate were fused together to protect my torso. Faulds, rings of armor that attached to the breast plate, dropped down and defended my hips, abdomen, and lower back. A red and white cloth, almost like a monk's robe, fluttered atop the entire contraption – my colors and seal.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the heavy covering atop my head, the cause of which my breath had been echoing into my ears for the past minute. The iron helmet was heavy and restricted my neck movement. A wide slit gave just enough room for my eyes to peer out directly in front of me, completely disregarding my peripheral vision. Twelve holes punched into the rounded surface in front of my mouth provided just enough oxygen for me to breathe.

Shakily, I raised my hands to try and hold myself close, disturbed at the lunacy of everything. Only problem with that action was that my hands were already occupied with holding objects. Specifically, a wide shield with a gleaming red cross on its front in one hand, and a sword half as tall as me gripped in the other.

A knight in shining armor. Literally.

The sword itself was made out of a tough metal, rippled steel warped down the face. The edges were razor sharp, but were still heavily nicked, indicating that it had been used quite a lot. A wide hilt branched outward, the image of an eagle sculpted onto the very end, a tiny sapphire laced into its eye. I'm not a sword aficionado, but I could certainly attest that this was one of the most beautiful weapons that I had ever seen.

Looking back up at the landscape before me, I stupidly gaped out at the expansive fields and slight rolling hills, finally snapping out of my myopia and now noting that the plain was not empty but instead crawling with people. Armored people. People on horseback. People touting bows. People huddled near tall wooden trebuchets

And all of them were clashing against one another in a frenzied mob of violence, blood, and gore.

A battle.

Hundreds upon hundreds of armed denizens hurled themselves at their foes. There might have well been ten thousand souls condensed into this melee. Red and white versus blue and white, based on the colors that comprised each opposing side's cloth. Swords flashed, screams erupted, and blood spilled. Several bodies littered the ground in front of me, some missing limbs, others collapsed in puddles of their own vomit or other bodily fluids. The roaring never ceased in volume as each side staggered against one another, like the ebb and flow of a wave upon a beach.

A thump hit the ground and I only had a fleeting glance at the flaming projectile, a ball of twine as tall as me set ablaze, before it rolled off to create havoc amongst the phalanxes. Several more of these orbs, thrown from trebuchets, bounced along in the mud, flames dripping from the incendiary ammunition. Patches of fire dotted the landscape, additional obstacles to avoid as the blood-soaked ground steadily became an inferno, aided by the wind that had been picking up for the past few minutes, causing embers to spread from one patch to another.

"What the fuck is going on?!" I roared out loud, certain that my voice could not penetrate the helmet constricting my head.

Something whistled by my head and I jerked to the side instinctively. Not easy to do with three hundred pounds of metal restricting your movement. A quick thunk sounded half a second later and my eyes were drawn to the object now embedded in the quagmire.

Thin, wooden, and marked by white feathers near the end of the shaft. An arrow.

Then… then that meant…

"ARROWS!" someone bellowed next to me. Without even being told further, somehow I dropped to a knee and brought my shield up at an angle, covering the majority of my head and torso.

There was no time to question how such instinct came second nature at a time like this. All I concerned myself with was staying alive at this point in time. Even though I was technically unconscious in another plane of existence, pain still hurt no matter where my mind resided. If this really was a hallucination, I would sure like to wake up now.

If only it were so easy.

As the wooden missiles continued to rain down upon my shield, I frantically tried to draw up images of this place from history. The presence of knights, including my current form, meant that this had to be sometime during the Middle Ages. Red and white colors, that had to be England. Blue and white, the opponents, France would be my assumption. Was this one of the many skirmishes that took place during the Hundred Years' War? Sadly, I lacked enough information to pin down any sort of conclusion. Aside from the participants in this fight, I was not going to elicit additional context elsewhere because no one was going to take time to halt their charge for a quick chat, nor did this large field provide any clues as to where I was in the world.

It turns out that life isn't like a video game at all, you know? The narrative does not necessarily revolve around you all the time.

Then what kind of player was I right now, seeing as I was here in this battle?

I glanced to the left just in time to see a fellow combatant, dressed in a less elaborate getup, suddenly take an arrow in the cheek. He coughed a red mist in surprise, and then he collapsed. No one came to help him.

Another infantryman took an arrow in the leg, and he dropped his weapons with a pained screech. Gritting his teeth, the man quickly broke off the shaft so that he could slide the rest of the arrow out of his thigh, but another arrow pierced his throat out of nowhere. The soldier gurgled, spat blood, and fell clutching his throat where he would die in minutes.

Fueled by an energized rage, now that the arrows had apparently stopped falling, I broke from my crouch and immediately clomped towards the front line, complete lunacy driving my actions. Something had snapped within me, after seeing myself surrounded by death. I had officially lost all care in staying alive – especially since I gave my chances at survival pretty much nil.

Strangely, I was no longer afraid after getting used to my surroundings. Odd, I would have figured that getting involved in such a fight would have scared me off good, but right now, all I was concerned about was to throw myself wholeheartedly into battle and fight for the glory of something-or-other.

I would definitely brag about how noble I was acting if I was not about to focus quite intently on committing mass murder at this moment. A soldier follows orders and my orders, for which I knew for some weird reason, were to break the enemy lines and eliminate as many of them as possible.

Well, I happened to be a knight in medieval times, I had a sword, and I believed that I had the ability to carry out those specific orders. When life gives you lemons…

As I approached the French lines, it was almost humorous to spot their terrified expressions at seeing a metal titan plod their way. It was also interesting to note that I happened to tower over just about everyone by at least a head. Funny, I didn't remember myself being that tall before. Maybe everyone in this time period was just shorter.

I jumped through a perimeter of fire to reach the enemy line, the dew-soaked armor managing to insulate me from the flames. The first soldier that I came across didn't even have time to collect his wits because my natural instinct was to raise my arm that held the broadsword and slam it down on the man's head in less than a second, cracking it in half in a vicious explosion of blood and bone.

My answering back strike took another soldier's arm off near the shoulder, and I ran him through while he was screaming in pain. A swordsman hesitantly tried to approach me, but he took a spear in the gut from one of my fellow infantrymen, causing him to vomit black gore before he died.

Wading further into the melee, I shoved forward with my shield, knocking an enemy to the ground. He spent a moment shaking his head as he lay there, dazed, until I stomped an armored heel on his neck. Another enemy combatant charged me, but his strike missed and ended up embedded in the crook between my shield and arm. I wrenched the man's sword out of his hand with a brutal twist and gave my own blade a flick, opening up his throat in a wide cut and sending a wave a blood gushing out in a fountain, coating me with the hot liquid.

Arrows sporadically fell around me, sometimes hitting the enemy, sometimes hitting my allies. One by one, warriors gradually fell as arrows suddenly and unexpectedly sprouted from their back, their chest, their mouths, and their eye sockets. A mountain of bodies, each dribbling blood, soon began to form in the middle of the all-out brawl, causing other hopeful glory seekers to stumble and trip, sending them to Valhalla sooner than expected.

A spear sprouted from the mass of flesh, shooting toward my face. Quickly, I dodged the attack and sheared the wooden pole in half with a swipe of my heavy shield. I then punched the spearman square in the face with my armored gauntlet, too close to rain my sword down upon the hapless foe. The man toppled over, jaw broken, nose ruined while his brain bounced around within his skull. He would perish here, like so many others before him.

In a flash, another soldier stepped out to face me, this one touting a crossbow. For some reason, I stood my ground, almost daring the man to fire. And fire he did, but the arrow merely glanced off my shoulder plate with a clang, staggering me back a half step. With an ugly laugh, I strode forward once, twice, and finally three times so that I could plant my sword right through the man's neck, severing his spinal cord.

There was a clomping sound and I barely had time to dodge before a brown mass shot past me, its rider whooping. The cavalryman had initially missed with a spear strike (which I had not even noticed) but he wheeled his horse about upon the battlefield and made another charge straight for me. We locked gazes, now recognizing the other's intent. The legionnaire dropped his spear and withdrew a curved sword, intent on lopping my head off as he passed me by.

That did not happen.

Two seconds before the horse was due to charge past, I quickly entered into a roll that put me onto the other side of the horse's assault, dirt raining perilously close to my body. The armor angrily pinched my skin during the roll and significantly slowed the action, but I had made it just in time for my counterattack.

Raising my blade as I kneeled, safe from being trampled by the horse's sharp hooves, my sword cut into the side of the massive animal, sending a wave of hot blood splashing to the ground and throwing the rider off as the horse kneeled and bled out. The cavalryman desperately tried to get to his feet, but his leg was clearly broken – a shard of his tibia, shockingly white, was poking through a gap in his chainmail. He did not suffer for long as I arrived upon him swiftly so that I could punch my sword brutally through the bone of his ribcage and into his heart. Motor functions ceased in milliseconds and he went limp, causing cheers to erupt from my countrymen in the wake of the stylistic kill.

Even though I was reveling in the madness of it all, I was still disturbed that I found myself… _enjoying_ this. All this chaos, this hunger, it was all so familiar to me for some reason. Like I had been a warrior my entire life, reflexes honed to perfection instead of cozying around an operation table.

These skills, these reflexes… they came on _instinct_. I had never done anything like this before, so where I had I learned to be a knight? Were these latent abilities, or was this simply the result of my brain trying to engross me more into my fantasies?

But what if there was a simpler explanation? A phenomenon that I've already encountered in my travels could be the answer. What if… this hallucination was simulating the theory of _quantum immortality_ upon me once again? One more Error after another, each death signaling the transition from universe to universe. It was the only explanation as how I was able to live this past life – the mechanics of which were conceived by an unconscious part of my brain, brought about by the hallucinogens flooding my lungs and altering my chemical composition.

Baring my teeth, clenching my hands so hard that knuckles popped, I gave a wildcat snarl.

So, if this was the way things were going to go, I'll play along. I'll play this little game. I'll play for as long as I have to, until I die… or until I win.

Drawing myself back to the battle, I slowly turned in place, my arms splayed out wide as smoke, fog, and flame wrapped around me as the endless mass of flesh, blood, and steel continued to dance in my presence.

Bathed in gore, I gave a primal howl. A challenge.

And a roar came as an answer.

Immediately, as if an unspoken cue had been ordered, the attackers from both sides parted to allow a berth between me and the challenger. Gradually, I shifted to greet the individual, who seemed to part the crowd aside from pure will, his stride soft yet deliberate.

This knight was just as tall as me, but decorated in the French colors. Their armor was just as elaborately constructed as mine, marred with several scrapes and grazes that would have been killing blows otherwise had the coverings not been there. The trappings wreathed about them lazily flapped in the wind, the fabric stiff and heavy. Adorning this man's helmet were a set of ram's horns, definitely the most eye-catching part of this knight's display, but undoubtedly conjuring up devilish comparisons.

Like me, they also carried a shield bearing their family's sigil. But in their weapon hand, instead of a sword, they carried an enormous, spikey mace, nearly a yard long. Blood and chunks of skin still adorned the pronged ball, dripping off of the weapon in a foreboding manner. Evidence of their prowess. It was not like I was comparatively untouched, for I still bore the remains of scores of enemies upon my armor, their blood already drying onto the metal. We were a frightful pair, both stained with death, yet hungry for more, our bloodlust in no way satiated.

And now we saw each other as the next course on the menu.

The crowd around us grew quiet and thrummed with an eager energy. Without being prompted, I performed a subtle salute to the knight, dipping my sword upward – the move simply coming to me naturally. In spite of my desires, the salute was not meant to be mocking in any way – simply an acknowledgement of the spectacular fight to come. The knight made his own gesture, but with a decisiveness so swift and calculated that it soon came to me that I recognized who this knight was.

 _How can it be… Vhen?_

" _Avez-vous d_ _é_ _j_ _à_ _compris, Sam?_ " the knight taunted in his language, a throaty rasp. " _Savez-vous comment vous libérer de cet enfer?_ "

Even though his mother tongue and mine were different, I still realized that I could understand his words perfectly.

::Have you figured it out yet, Sam? Do you know how to free yourself from this hell?::

Now things had just gotten even more insane. So not only was I in the wrong time period, but Vhen had followed me? How the hell did that work out? Was this more drug trickery? Another mental illusion? I would sure like to know how and why Vhen was standing across from me, this time in a human form, ready to kill like he was back on the beach.

Fuck it. Knowing that the knight was Vhen's manifestation would only give me more incentive to strike him down, anyway.

Glowering behind the helmet, I bent my knees in the attack position.

"I really don't care, you piece of shit," I shot back, my own voice deep and gravelly. "If I have to kill you again, so be it."

The knight, "Vhen," laughed, an ugly guttural sound.

" _Par tous les moyens, attaquez_ ," he beckoned with his mace.

::By all means, attack.::

"With pleasure," I breathed right before I rushed the knight with all the speed I could muster out of my armored body.

Twenty meters were covered in three seconds. Vhen didn't even bother to move in that time. Bellowing, I raised my sword easily with my arm before slicing downward with all my strength. Vhen easily blocked the blow with his shield, causing my weapon to harmlessly bounce off. He answered with a blow of his own, one that my shield barely managed to deflect, yet his mace tore several gouges into the protective metal.

Furious, I swung back, yet he effortlessly parried before moving into a riposte. I backpedaled so that Vhen's swing hit nothing but air in its travels. Digging a heel into the mud, I responded with a swift stab that caused Vhen to hastily jump to the side so that he would not be speared. His shield then knocked my sword away and he swung again, yet I was already well out of arm's reach by the time his mace reached the spot that I had been occupying moments before.

Taking a moment, we circled the other as the anxious crowd rumbled around us. I knew our eyes had to be locked, helmet to helmet, but I could spot nothing underneath the man's dark covering that would indicate anything resembling a human. My breath snorted and sweat beaded upon my brow as my weapons were now starting to indicate their weight to me. To my alarm, I could not tell if Vhen was beginning to tire at all or not. The knight still looked as impassive as when we had traded our first blows.

Knowing that I had to act before Vhen could catch his breath, I made a diagonal cut in the air, aiming to slice Vhen from clavicle to sternum. He blocked it, but I was expecting him to do so. With our weapons tangled against one another, I hurled my weight against my shield and full-on body checked Vhen, causing him to stagger as he was momentarily caught off-guard, his armor rattling with every step.

He did not fall, but I was there to meet him wholeheartedly.

I aimed a blow to Vhen's side, but he deflected.

He tried to find my head with his mace. I parried.

I aimed low to try and cut at his legs. Vhen jumped aside.

He whirled at my side to try and catch an unprotected flank. My shield batted the weapon away.

In the middle of yet another ugly clash of steel upon steel, sending a few sparks raining down, we quickly broke apart, both now panting heavily.

" _Vous saves que vous ne pouvez pas vraiment me tuer, n'est-ce pas?_ " Vhen breathed before whirling into another strike.

::You know you cannot truly kill me, right?::

"Just watch me," I gritted as I ducked and returned the favor with an answering swing of my own, finally catching one of the ram's horns on Vhen's helmet, shearing the bone off and making the covering asymmetrical.

Vhen lamented the loss of his decoration with a scream, now beginning to swing wildly with his mace without grace or precision. One of his blows missed my head but his momentum was so great that he momentarily left his side exposed right in front of my face. I made his mistake immediately known by quickly lunging forth with my sword, managing to puncture metal and flesh for a second before Vhen jumped away with a cry.

It did not matter. My sword had all the evidence I needed - a wet red tip slowly dribbling down to the hilt. Vhen's blood.

In spite of his injury, the gigantic knight _laughed_.

" _Vous avez mal compris. Vous pouvez me terminer ici, mais nous sommes simplement destin_ _é_ _s_ _à_ _r_ _é_ _p_ _é_ _ter cette recontre encore et encore_."

::You misunderstand. You may end me here, but we are simply destined to repeat this encounter again and again.::

For the umpteenth time since landing in this warzone, I stopped dead in my tracks.

If my initial theory had been flimsy before, Vhen's statement had just confirmed it. This hallucination really was as elaborate as I had feared. Apparently Vhen really did mean that this, where we were, was definitely a recreation of the cosmic accident that had initially messed up my life. It was more obvious than ever that this battle was simply one moment out of an infinite number of possibilities that the multiverse could conjure. A journey through past lives made possible by quantum immortality, with Vhen as the guest of honor.

I could scarcely believe it, yet it was the best theory to utilize. Once again, I was stuck in this endless loop, damned to traverse world after world until the roulette could finally spin back onto the place I called home.

At least until I snapped out of this drug-fueled nightmare! If I could ever get my hands on Eyzn for throwing me in here…

Damn it all. There was nothing else to do right now except kill the asshole in front of me. I could figure out the specifics later. If I survived.

With an unintelligible scream, I scythed my sword through the air, narrowly grazing Vhen's breastplate and tearing the fabric draping his frame, causing it to hang off him in tatters. Vhen uttered a curse and scrambled back, but I advanced, not keen on giving this bastard any room. I was too far gone now, fed up with how my life had turned out. I wanted blood and I was not going to stop until Vhen spilled his. If I had to do this _ad infinitum_ , so be it.

My swings became routine in jackhammer blows, each one bouncing off Vhen's shield, but lowering him further and further to the ground with each heavy impact. For the first time, I could see fear translate into Vhen's stance – his knees wobbled and the arm that held the mace wavered slightly. He was weakening – don't back down now, Sam!

"Die!" I roared, my blade momentarily flickering across the sun, intent on separating Vhen's head from his neck in this final blow. With every muscle strand in my arms yanking downward, I hurled the sword in a powerful swing.

The sword impacted into the mud with a loud thunk, having missed Vhen completely. He had rolled out of the way just in time, already back up to his full height, lurching at me once more with his bronzed weapon. I barely had enough time to yank my sword free of the gooey muck and to raise my shield in haste, meeting our tools together once more.

There was a sickening impact that jolted all the way up my arm and Vhen uttered a loud curse. He had somehow gotten his mace stuck to the inside of my shield, the spikes having dug into the inner surface and refusing to let go. Vhen jerked this way and that, desperate to free his weapon, but not before I took advantage of the moment and chopped my own blade down onto Vhen's exposed wrist.

" _Merde!_ " Vhen cried out as he staggered backward, his mace and my shield now torn free of our grips, both items now sinking into the sticky mud.

My sword blow had been absorbed by the chainmail that Vhen had been wearing, so what should have been a dismembering blow only turned into an inconvenient cut. It was actually a little more severe than that, now that I paid closer attention to the wound, as Vhen was holding his arm to his chest like his wrist had been broken, and blood was now dripping freely from the chainmail, staining the steel links red.

I may now be shield-less, but Vhen was weapon-less as well. Gripping my broadsword with both hands, I was now free to swing away at Vhen to my heart's content, my blows doubling in energy. Clang after clang resounded as I soundlessly slammed strike upon strike onto Vhen, each impact weakening him as his shield blocks grew more and more tired. I so dearly wanted to taunt this man, to taste his fear as I extinguished him in this universe. I did it once, so I could certainly do it again.

One ferocious swing batted Vhen's shield aside, allowing me to jab my blade between armor plating and into the meat surrounding his shoulder socket. Ignoring his screams, I wrenched the sword deeper into the wound, tearing up the muscle and destroying the arm's usefulness. Not remotely finished, I wrenched the blade free and heavily swung it into Vhen's kneecap, shattering it and causing him to drop to a knee.

Vhen's shield left limp fingers and the crowd buzzed with anticipation as I lined up my master stroke for the second time. I let the sword lightly touch Vhen's neck and, panting tiredly, he still managed to give off an air of superiority, irking me to no end. I could still not see his eyes as he gazed up at me, but from the angle of his lopsided helmet, there was no mistaking that he was imagining my image with all of the hatred and bile he could muster in his putrid heart.

Can't really say that I blamed him. I too did not exactly hold such a high opinion of him in kind.

"Stay dead this time," I snarled as I raised the sword for what would be the final time.

"You'll find out soon enough," Vhen replied in plain English.

As startled as I was, nothing could have stopped me from altering the trajectory of my swing any further. There was a hiss as the blade tip shaved the air, followed by a brief moment of resistance, and then it was done.

Vhen's helmeted head rolled away from his body, separated from his shoulders, the bloody stump oozing blood everywhere. Cheers erupted from the English as they saw their champion victorious and the rabble dissolved into fighting the enemy army once more, but my battle was over, yet in more ways than I initially expected.

I barely had enough time to contemplate my handiwork before a white-hot pinprick flickered within my chest, and soon I was whisked away once more, the entire field wiped away by blinding light, its combatants dissolved all around me, leaving just me as the sole witness.

 _-Light, poised in beautiful contrails and spheres, swirled and beckoned-_

 _Aberration Sequence #3_ _  
_ _Arras, France, 1917, 2:54 PM_

My consciousness was then thrown down after my eyeballs finished boiling over. Groaning, I mustered myself into a sitting position, finding that I was now wedged against a wall somewhere. Deep booms, explosions, were now resonating off in the distance, but very close as denoted by their volume. There were still people shouting around me, but the vocabulary being used was much more modern than the old-fashioned vernacular previously being utilized by the soldiery of 'ye olde England.'

My eyes were still closed though, so it took a lot of effort for me to muster them open again.

"Oh… no," I uttered, horrified as chaos beckoned. "You have got to be fucking me in the-,"

Dirt erupted in front of me, spraying wet clumps of mud in my direction. I threw myself down on the ground to evade the blast, only to find myself smack-dab in the middle of a dark brown puddle. I gagged on the wretched water, tasting the raw decay that tainted it. My ears were ringing painfully but I could now discern the muted crackle and pops that punctured through the audible fog – gunfire, I realized.

Trembling, I crawled out of the filthy pool, now soaked to the bone, and pitifully entered into a dug trench just a few feet in front of me. Shaking horribly due to the cold, I wrapped my arms around myself as I worked to warm my frozen limbs up.

Then I saw the blank stare of the man huddled in this trench with me.

I must have opened my jaw a few times, failing to notice that no noise was being emitted, as I beheld several more men like the one in front of me, just staring off into space as they slumped lifelessly in their holes. They weren't dead, but they certainly were not attentive to what was going on at hand, almost certainly another battle, I had come to deduce. All they could manage was a few sleepy, slow blinks, with some gingerly grasping at their feet like sores had sprung up upon them there.

In fact, these men were not the only sorry looking things stuck here in this trench with me. The people – _soldiers_ \- that were cognizant enough to display any sort of activity all looked glum, like they were operating on less than two hours of sleep. Boxes of what appeared to be ammunition were spilled all over the place, creating brass tinkles every time someone trod upon the spilt bullets. Discolored logs had been nailed into place along the sides of the trenches to keep the mud from spilling into the gullies and drowning the soldiers within them. Boards had been laid down to create a makeshift path through the trench, but mud coated the planks and rendered them quite slippery, meaning that every so often a soldier would heavily take a knee with a thump, always followed by a curse.

To my right, a white cloth served as a makeshift shield from the rays of the sun. Underneath the shabby tent lay soldiers wrapped in pure white bandages, covering heavy blood spots, some shawled around the stumps of limbs that had been blown off or amputated. Blood soaked into the ground so badly that it looked almost black. The feeble attempts of the medics to try and scour the blood clean off the benches were futile – their soggy towels were just too saturated with the spilt blood that they only smeared the fluids around instead of mopping them up.

Moans from the injured and dying reached my ears. I knew from sight that most of them would not make it through the hour, judging by how bad their injuries were. Some soldiers upon the benches started seizing, a couple vomited black goo (a sign of hemorrhaging organs), and screams and cries erupted from the ones still unfortunately conscious enough to witness the medics sawing off useless limbs. Morphine would solve many of the crises these doctors had to deal with, but with the sheer volume of patients to attend to, it was very possibly that they were in the middle of a desperate shortage of the drug.

Trapped by fear and indecision, I did not rise to assist.

From the brief glances I had mustered upon arriving here to the sights that were now upon me, I would have to be some kind of moron not to realize that I was in the middle of a World War I battlefield instead of some nameless conflict back in the Middle Ages. It all made sense – the guns, the trenches, the people trying to treat the various diseases they had managed to catch in these squalid conditions. Yes, this was undoubtedly World War I.

Angrily, it looked like Vhen had been somewhat right in his assessment. This nightmare had not ended after all, but had started up in earnest. After all, I did get hastened away to this place mere moments after I had beheaded Vhen with a broadsword upon a trampled, grassy plain. Now I was here in no man's land, stuck firmly into the thick of things, mud and sick completely painting my body as the screams of the dying bled together to become a symphony.

I just needed to figure how this hallucination was supposed to work! Wasn't the old mantra something like, if you realized you were in a hallucination, you should wake up?

Oh crap, no. That's one of the mechanics of _dreaming_. Totally different.

Back to square one. Why was I in this place instead of participating in a Medieval Times act? Did I just happen to be injected into yet another one of my past lives, this time as a participant of the first Great War? All signs pointed to yes, but that did not help me figure out how I was supposed to get out of here and go back to Rannoch… and Nya.

So, time to backtrack a bit. I thought hard for a few seconds before I came to a shaky conclusion. I only came here mere seconds after I had killed Vhen, right? Vhen had been taunting me about my inability to truly kill him earlier – did that mean that our fates were somehow linked? If one died, the other had to come with him? It seemed to be a solid theory – after all, the last two times that I had "killed" Vhen in each sequence had resulted in a new stage in this hallucination every time. Perhaps Vhen was the catalyst for this illusion's behavior – the key to solving everything.

Only problem was that I had naught in terms of proof that my so-called theory held any weight. There was only one way to test it, though. I just had to find Vhen in this universe and see what would become as a result of our inevitable clash together.

Knowing how fate liked to repeat itself, my guess was that he wasn't far.

A sergeant suddenly got into my face and screamed at me to stand up, his accent so thick that I initially had trouble understanding his words. I did so instinctively, unfamiliar actions once again feeling routine. I was no longer a knight with vassals to command here. In this sodden trench I was yet another nameless grunt, doomed to perish in this wasteland as death casually passed by overhead in the form of bullets and mortars.

Looking up at the patchy sky, I could see the figures of biplanes flying in and out of the low cloud cover, their cannons spitting fire and their bellies opening up bombs onto their enemies situated on the ground hundreds of feet below them. It was a majestic sight, watching these flying creations duel each other in a deadly dance, but there were more important things for me to concentrate on.

I checked my person, trying to get my bearings on what supplies I had. Judging from the long object slung over my back, I'd say that I was adequately armed to some degree. I reached over and flipped a rifle into my hands, dismally taking note that, even though I had no idea what kind of pedigree this weapon had, it looked to have been made on the cheap. The stock was wooden, but it had not even been stained or glossed for extra reinforcement. The magazine wiggled in its lock and the barrel was coated with mud and other crap. I worried about even pulling the trigger – it was liable to blow up in my hands instead of eliminating a targeted foe with a dispensed bullet.

In addition to the rifle, I quickly realized that I also had a litany of accoutrements available at my disposal. At my hip rested a sidearm, sturdy and weighty. Perhaps it might prove more reliable than the rifle. A gas mask hung at my hip next to two ammunition magazines each for my rifle and pistol. A portable spade was slung to my belt next to my sidearm, the right edge serrated in case it needed to be swung at a neck instead of a dirt pile. In my various pockets I found wire cutters, a couple of empty sandbags, a bayonet, two hand grenades, and flares (yet no flare gun). All the necessary ingredients for one common foot soldier.

Did it make me feel relief? Hell, no. But at least I felt somewhat empowered. Holding a gun may be a stupidly simple way to activate an adrenaline rush, but damned if it doesn't do the job so well!

With the power to kill literally resting in your palms, you feel invincible.

A whistle pierced the air, sending alarm rushing through my veins. Officers began to bark orders, yet all of them meant the same thing: _charge!_

As soon as the order had been issued, the ground began to shake, causing loose pebbles to tumble into the trench. I had the faintest inkling that an earthquake was miraculously occurring, but a gigantic tank quickly arrived from the rearward side to set me back to reality. The tank, a Mark 1, was equipped with long, enormous treads that allowed it to travel easily over the trenches. There was so much horsepower in that behemoth's engine that it barely registered any decrease in velocity as it encountered obstacles in its way. It simply reduced any blockage to pancakes as it carelessly ran over them.

Back onto the road to glory I go. Damn it all.

With a deep breath, I rushed toward the ladder that led out into the hell that awaited. Many fresh, young soldiers froze in shock as they finished scaling the wall. I didn't, but I could understand why many would be in for a surprise.

The no-man's-land looked exactly like the pictures from every single history class. Barren, flat, not a speck of green to be found. This had been a forest once, but all the trees had their leaves blown completely off to leave sharp wooden spears behind, and whatever grass there had been was all swampy brown muck. Trenches zig-zagged across the plain, providing reprieve to the souls that hid themselves within. Smoke billowed in the air in multiple places, throwing a haze over the battlefield that occasionally reduced visibility to nil.

Sagely, I decided that my best chance of survival would be to situate myself behind the tank. Large, mobile, bulletproof obstacle and all that. I quickly hustled over to the rear of the massive machine, simultaneously screwing on my bayonet, just in case. The guys who did not have the luxury of such cover were not so lucky.

A mass of bullets sprayed the ground, the shooters still unseen courtesy of the rolling smoke in this devastation. Waves upon waves of soldiers crumpled as they were struck by enemy fire. Many collapsed into puddles of their own gore, creating bloody splashes. Some were blown apart from cannon or mortar fire, the last lingering images of them flying apart in all directions in wet, unintelligible clumps of flesh. Some were set ablaze from long gouts that spouted from flamethrowers, throwing away all caution as they flailed their limbs and howled in pain as their flesh melted.

Many screamed for their mothers, their wives, their god, as they died. They would be unfairly denied each time.

Despite the carnage, I managed to keep my breakfast down. I gathered my courage and hunkered down a little closer behind the tank.

Find Vhen. Just find Vhen.

A corporal next to me peeked out from the side of the tank, and lost half his head to a stray bullet. It punched out the back of his skull, sending his brains splattering into the poor soul that had been marching behind him, who would have collapsed into hysterics if his mates had not held him in line.

The body was left where it had fallen.

Another shout from the makeshift squad rang out, drawing our attention to the left. An anti-tank unit was busy working to rotate their field gun in the direction of our Mark 1 about twenty meters away. They had not noticed that our group had been bunched up at the rear of their target, which left them wide open for us to pick off.

Everything was second nature. Ready the gun, look down the sights, fire. The rifle jerked against my shoulder. Miraculously, a puff of red exploded from one of the engineer's heads as I brought the weapon down from its recoil. Was that my shot? Hard to be sure. In any case, we were peppering the field gun's position so badly that the remaining troops stationed there were unable to make it over to their gun so that they could fire upon our tank.

Driven by the same brazen, stupid courage that had previously gripped me in the Middle Ages, I let loose a war cry as I sprinted from cover, frantic for blood. I held my rifle high, bayonet tip spearing outward, as I rushed the field gun's position, intent on surprising the two engineers still bunkered there.

One enemy trooper popped out of cover briefly to ascertain the situation, but was surprised with my bayonet charge. Still howling, I never slowed as my rifle slammed dead center into the man's chest, causing him to fall soundlessly. The final enemy engineer was taken out by a sniper shot, a singular hit to the temple.

The man who I had just stabbed with my bayonet continued to splutter and wheeze, but fell silent after I cracked the butt of my rifle upon his head several times. One… two… I lost count after that. Very soon my rifle butt was lathered with blood and brains, and the engineer's head had gone catastrophically squishy. I only wandered back to the tank after the rest of my squad screamed at me to head back to cover.

Once again, I had lost control of myself, like my body was operating independently of my thoughts. Did this, these abhorrent actions, my desire for conflict, represent the person who I would have been in this time period, or was just simply the real me having cracked out of his shell at last?

Why did violence always seem to follow me?

Disturbed thoughts clouding my brain, I closely continued to group up with my squad behind the tank, every one of us wincing a little bit as we heard bullets and other small arms fire ping and spark off of the armored surface. This would normally not be the ideal place to remain, as this tank was a goddamn bullet magnet, but it was the only tangible piece of cover that we had at the moment. All this thing had to do was to stay in one piece.

As usual, I should have kept my mouth shut.

There was no warning, nothing to indicate that anything was wrong, before the tank suddenly blew up in a fiery conflagration. A mine, maybe… or a bomb, a mortar, it honestly did not matter which. Shards of shrapnel were flung in all directions – one particular piece was so sharp that it scalped one of the soldiers next to me, killing him nearly instantly. Boiling flames burst out from the now splayed remains of the mobile fortress, along with the panicked screams of the men burning alive inside it.

"Good Christ, they're dying in there!" a private cried out, only to be tackled to the filthy ground by a superior.

"You can't save them!" he shouted at the private. "This corridor has been pre-sighted for mortars! Get to a trench and get your _fucking heads down!_ "

The private shakily got back to his feet and obediently did as he was told… for all of five seconds.

Submachine gun fire rattled out from the smoke, causing the private's body to jerk for a moment until he fell, riddled. Continued screams for cover were elicited, only to be silenced as mortars blasted the unit to bits. Limbs and clumps of shredded meat that looked like hamburger were flung every which way. Men crumpled where they were as enemy fire tore into them. They clutched at their bellies, desperate to keep their intestines from sliding out as bloody pink sausages threatened to slip between their fingers. Many collapsed in conniptions, sitting in puddles of blood and puke.

From behind the wreckage of the tank, I stayed where I was for a few more seconds. Bringing the flimsy stock of the rifle up to my shoulder, I let loose a few more rounds, making a face as the loud reports began to irritate my already damaged eardrums. The rifle had a hell of a kickback, the stock digging into my shoulder with each pull of the trigger. I was just firing blindly, I had no idea where the enemy even was – as far as I was concerned, this was just cover fire for the troops, oddly recalling some distant training that I had technically never been put through.

The bolt on the rifle smacked open. Empty. I fumbled for a new magazine after the old clip was ejected. Pure muscle memory – hit the release, slide the clip in, push the bolt forward. Loaded.

Intent on following my cadre to the safety the nearby trenches provided, I was about to make a run for it, when there was a distinct pop and I saw thick, olive green clouds expand right were the soldiers had been massing. Cries for masks to go on went up, but I could tell that it would be too late for the poor guys caught unawares from the noxious fumes.

Chlorine gas. Even upwind, I could get a whiff of the terrible gas. Pepper and pineapple – odd combination but distinct nonetheless. I even got a faint metallic taste in the back of my tongue and parts of my throat started to feel prickly. Hoping that I had not been exposed to too high of a concentrate, I shoved my gas mask on, now subjugated to the sour fumes of the fresh rubber the mask was comprised of.

Guess I was trapped behind this shambles of a tank, then. Even with a mask on, there was no way I was venturing down into a chlorine infested trench. Many people did not know that chlorine was chosen as a chemical weapon specifically because it reacted with the water in our lungs to form one of the most corrosive substances known to man: hydrochloric acid. Inhale too much gas and you dissolve from the inside out. Nasty way to go. Even now, I could see scores of soldiers down on their knees, bloody vomit spurting from the edges of their gas masks. They were literally puking their guts up.

With a temporary retreat now crossed off my list of options, I began to get a bit antsy. I still needed to get to better cover – sitting still was just an open invitation to be encroached upon by an enemy. Imagine my surprise when I screwed up my courage and decided to make a break for the next (hopefully) unmolested trench, only to run into a masked German soldier previously hidden as he hugged the side of the flaming tank, a rifle of similar build gripped in his hands.

Our guns raised at the same time, but strangely, we did not fire. It was as if we shared one mind, already anticipating and somehow realizing the truth, despite these heinous conditions.

"I've been waiting for you," the masked German whispered in English, only a slight accent licking at the edge of his words.

Vhen. What a surprise.

"Congratulations," I said flatly, right before I pulled the trigger.

 _Click_.

Crap! Of all the times for this piece of shit rifle to jam!

Panicked, I backpedaled as I wrenched the bolt open, forcing the gun to eject the round, which had been coated in a fine layer of dirt, preventing it from being fired. I slammed the bolt forward again, shunting a new round into place, but it was too late.

Vhen, or whatever this incantation of Vhen was supposed to be, was not stupid as he realized that I was not in a really talkative mood, as evidenced by my actions. But while I had been frantically trying to shove a usable round into my gun, he had already had his own weapon up, calm and collected as he exchanged the first shots between us.

A flash erupted from Vhen and I was thrown to the ground, my shoulder numb. The pain was only an afterthought as shock had already taken hold and grown roots. Skin clammy, breath short, I lay on the ground only to watch Vhen adjust his aim a bit, peering at my head from behind his iron sights.

Not so fast, you bastard.

My right arm was still functional and it still gripped my rifle. Clumsily, I strained my muscles as I lifted the gun upward a bit and at the same time pulled the trigger, the blast wrenching my gun upward. This time, there was a bullet to coincide with my actions.

As fire blossomed from my barrel, Vhen similarly dropped with a howl, a hand clutched over his side. Not a killing blow, but definitely a painful one. Yet Vhen was still mobile whereas I was struggling to even sit up.

But he no longer had a gun in his hands. Now… it was a club, a spiked club at that.

The man sure loves spikey things, doesn't he?

Not terribly keen on getting bashed in the head with… _that_ , I made an effort to reach for my sidearm but I was too slow and too clumsy, for Vhen quickly approached me where I lay and kicked the shoulder that I had been shot in.

Okay, _now_ there was pain. If it had not been there before, it sure was making itself known in force.

Vhen squatted down next to me as I roared helplessly. There was literally nothing that I could do. He reached over and grabbed my chin and ripped my mask off, forcing me to look at his own covered face, to peer into the black glassy pits that covered his eyes.

The imposing German held the club high, his breath coming in deep hisses. "Have you figured it out yet, what this place is?" he softly asked me. "Have you discovered the secret on how to return home?"

Snarling like a caged animal, I spat at the man's feet. "Just get it over with. I want another go at you."

Vhen sighed, momentarily dipping his head in disappointment. "As you wish," he said as he very suddenly smashed the spiked club right into my face.

Blood spurted into the air.

I was surprised at how little pain there was.

 _-Light, poised in beautiful contrails and spheres, swirled and beckoned-_

* * *

Meanwhile

Nya roared as she launched herself at Kraana, but the omni-cuff chaining her wrist to the table unceremoniously halted her advance. Awkwardly, her body jerked as she was restrained in place, her limbs flailing inches away from Kraana's white visor. Not keen on giving up any time soon, Nya unleashed another frantic yell as she desperately tried to claw at the woman in the room with her, despite knowing that it was a useless gesture.

Kraana just clucked and shook her head mockingly as she paced in a taunting manner well outside Nya's reach, hands folded behind her back.

Like many of the rooms aboard the quarian shuttle, this one was quite bare as well. Storage boxes were piled in columns up to the ceiling and the lone table was bolted down to the floor. It would serve well as a makeshift brig, for it was doing a halfway decent job in keeping Nya restrained in place, no matter how hard she tugged at the cuffs restraining her to the immovable object.

"What have you done with Sam?!" Nya screamed as she fruitlessly scratched at the cuffs. "Where is he? I want to see my husb-,"

Kraana swiftly walked up to Nya before she could react and delivered an open slap on the side of her helmet. The blow was more insulting than it was painful, but Nya still clasped a hand to the afflicted area in horror.

"Be quiet, you little slut," Kraana hissed. "I have no time for your antics, nor am I obligated to grant your requests."

"But… but why?" Nya now hoarsely whispered, her hand slowly peeling away from her visor.

Kraana sniffed in evil pleasure. "'Why'… _what?_ "

"Why are you tormenting us like this? Why couldn't you just leave us alone?"

The older quarian then walked around the rear of the table, still out of Nya's reach while her eyes never left her stepdaughter.

"I'm afraid that it's too late to simply leave you alone. Unfortunately for the both of us, your father seems to have some sort of vested interest in you that even I am unable to process fully. He's the one who's frankly obsessed with pursuing this foolish errand, and that's why I am unable to let this go. If anything, _I_ am the one being tormented here, not you."

Nya whirled, fingers clawing at the table's smooth surface. "I don't follow."

"Of course you don't," Kraana chuckled. "How could you? You've been _given_ everything in your life from what I've heard – a mate, an apartment, your own ship, and now you have your father practically throwing himself at you in an effort to expand his family. All that for you, while the three of us have been in dire straits for most of our lives, strong-armed into servitude while you frolicked freely. My own son… forced to remain in squalor because of my actions…"

Flabbergasted, all of Nya's muscles froze for many seconds until a disbelieving laugh bubbled from her throat. Helpless, she looked to the ceiling as if to divine understanding from a higher power.

"Ancestors…" Nya regretfully blinked her eyes. "You have to be the most deluded person I've ever met. I have not been given _anything_ in my life! What the… how did you even come to think that? Did my father specifically fail to mention that I did not step foot on the flotilla for years after I was born, that I was forced to be delegated to the most menial of tasks for even longer specifically because of how my name was sullied – by _him?_ I only managed to claw myself out of my bitter life once I had met my mate – Sam – and he was my inspiration for pursuing a life beyond what I had originally settled for. In no way was he the cause!"

"Yet he lathers you with praise, and you share his bed in return. Somehow you've ended up in a position far beyond anything I've ever been in."

"That tends to happen when you genuinely care about the person you pledge yourself to."

Kraana growled as she dismissively waved a hand as she moved back to the door. "Spare me your sarcasm, you petulant child. I must say, you are far more acerbic than anyone of our kind that I have met before."

"Really?" Nya's visor hid a tight grin. "Good. I'd guess that my husband's wit has rubbed off on me a bit."

"So impressionable," Kraana mocked. "So naïve."

Nya scoffed in derision. "Don't project your problems onto me. It's not my fault that you're jealous of the fact that I found a better mate than you."

In a flash, Kraana shot next to Nya and wrapped a limber hand around the younger quarian's neck. With an unexpected burst of force, she pushed Nya's back onto the table, pinning her down as she towered over her stepdaughter, her breaths coming in deep pants now.

" _Jealous_ , am I?" Kraana breathed as she tightened her hold on Nya's arm and neck, causing her captive to silently plead for air. "Perhaps that _is_ the correct word, if I might give you some credit. I don't see things quite like you, to be honest. From your perspective, it may appear that I am operating purely on jealousy, but I think it's a bit simpler than that. I believe that I see things in terms of _fairness_ , not stupid little things like emotions. After all, ours is a society that pledges the wellness of the community over the self, yet there are still pockets of our kind that rise above the common dreck and make names for themselves, ultimately leading to better lives. Haven't you found it odd that there are several individuals among our kind that advertise themselves as being superior to the masses? If that's the case, why should our society continue to operate in such a fashion if others benefit from our work? The admirals, the relatives of these admirals, even _you_ have managed to break free of the mold. Why is it fair that _you_ get access these opportunities and people like me do not?"

"Because," Nya choked out around Kraana's clamped hand, "you're a traitor to our race. You… forfeited your opportunities when you sold our people out."

"Oh, my dear," Kraana cooed in her velvety voice, silver eyes blending into a silver background. She released her hand from Nya's neck and seductively sild her fingers down Nya's suited body, from her collar to her hip, making the woman shudder nervously. "If you really knew what caused my exile, why… I would surmise that you should be even more fearful than you are now."

Nya stared blankly, uncomprehending, which prompted Kraana to continue.

"You were referring to my supposed communication with a band of batarian rebels that subsequently got exposed and resulted in exile for me, yes? Hah! That was just the fiction those admirals cooked up as a bipartisan talking point so that they could assure their crews that the circumstances surrounding my… 'departure' were more palatable than the truth."

Kraana then took Nya's hand, her unshackled one, and very slowly placed it on her belly, splaying her stepdaughter's three fingers wide as she forced the younger woman to touch her there. Nya moaned in dread, eyes trembling as Kraana leaned in uncomfortably close.

"Eyzn would not have been my only child," the woman murmured softly, almost in a loving manner as she continued to hold Nya's hand upon her abdomen. "You've never had to contend with the flotilla's barbaric policies for as long as I have, specifically considering the law forcing parents to only bear one child for the purposes of population control, conserving resources, that sort of thing. You might have not been here or you were too young to remember, but for a short time many years ago, the policy of only having one child was temporarily lifted on the flotilla in the wake of a sudden population decrease. I _loved_ the sensation of carrying a baby to full term, to grow large with child, and to eventually hold a little one in my arms after hours upon hours of labor. Everything concerning my son has been worth it - I _loved_ feeling like a mother. I so dearly wanted to attain that feeling again, so once I heard that the one child rule had been rescinded for the time being, I took it upon myself to become impregnated once more, so that I could welcome another child into this sorry galaxy of ours."

"Y-You…" Nya stammered, momentarily being caught off guard as Kraana's hand now roamed to Nya's thigh, "you just… impregnated yourself? But there… there were still rules on the flotilla… a wait list, economic incentives to be divided amongst participants. You couldn't just have a child at will even when the one child policy had been lifted!"

"Oh yes, but that was just the start of how our people's hypocrisy was exposed. Who were they to tell _me_ that I could not have another baby? There were less qualified people on that waitlist, less _deserving_ people than me who received the right to bear another child. For instilling in our minds that all our people were equal, they certainly had no trouble amending that declaration when it suited their needs."

Nya finally tore her hand away from Kraana's abdomen, but the older quarian did not move away, and instead leaned more uncomfortably closer over her stepdaughter.

"What… what happened t-to the b-baby?"

Kraana wilted, her fingers digging into Nya's suit, painfully rubbing against the flesh within.

"I was discovered, of course. It was an inevitability that I would be found out, I suppose, and hiding a pregnancy on the flotilla was a tough endeavor to begin with. Apparently, since I had neglected to inform anyone of my decision to become pregnant with a second child and that I had completely rejected the concept of the queue, I was forced by an admiral to… terminate the pregnancy. I had no choice anymore. They made me abort my child. Can you imagine having your eyes open one moment, life resting in your belly, and the next moment you wake up, and you have this sinking, empty feeling inside? You can't bear to look down at yourself, but you eventually give in, knowing that you couldn't save your baby… and you find nothing greeting you. Could you possibly even begin to comprehend the kind of grief I felt at that moment?"

Shocked, Nya timidly shook her head. "I… I can't…" she squeaked.

"I didn't think so," Kraana grimaced. "How _could_ you know? You've never even felt the joy of being a mother, how could understand the pain that comes with it? But that wasn't why I was exiled, of course. Not even the Admiralty Board would be so cruel to exile one of their own for getting pregnant when it wasn't their turn. No, what I subsequently did was… probably considered despicable by many, but to me, it was _fair_. No doubt that they exiled me for what I did _next_."

"What?"

Kraana looked off into the distance, her gaze wistful. She then considered Nya underneath her, still pinned to the table in this demeaning position.

"The admiral who ordered the termination of my pregnancy had never been afflicted with a tragedy in his life. Funny, how cruel people can find ways keep their consciences clean, to trick their minds into thinking that their own actions were justified. Well, this admiral just so happened to have a daughter – young thing, early to mid-twenties. Very impressionable, like you, but a whole lot dumber. It wasn't terribly hard to discover her whereabouts, I might add. It wasn't hard either to sidle up to her once she was off duty, slip a few relaxants in her drink, seduce her, and take her someplace where I knew that we wouldn't be disturbed for a while."

Kraana noted Nya's horrified expression and laughed. "No, I know what you're thinking: I did not kill her. I just was making sure to repay the admiral's punishment in kind. He took something from me, you see, so I made sure to take something away from him. Or more like, I made sure that after I was finished with his daughter that he would never have the opportunity to welcome any grandchildren into his family forever."

Nya uttered a panicked sob. "You're… a _monster_."

"Hmm," Kraana mused as she lightly tapped a finger upon Nya's vocabulator. "That was the exact word they used to describe me when they exiled me. They couldn't even justify executing me, for what I did was considered too heinous in their eyes – rumors would spread like fire and the morale blow could potentially have been catastrophic. Instead they cooked up a farfetched story about me and some batarians, and sent me on my way. Xen, of course, saw my potential and intercepted me in secret to work amongst her staff, and of course, here we are now."

Kraana finally released Nya, allowing her to sit up, and she walked back a few steps, hands on her hips.

"But now… I'm just disappointed. Iroa blathered on and on about you, painting you as some kind of lofty figure in his eyes. He was so determined to find you, Nyareth, that he gradually neglected the new family that he had found. I now see that Eyzn and I matter very little to him in his eyes. He wants you, and I still cannot fathom _why_."

Nya timidly placed her feet back onto the floor, her body hunched and tense. "By all means, you can have him. I surely don't want him. After that little story you just told, I'm more disgusted in Iroa that he managed to marry you nonetheless!"

"Oh, Nyareth. I never told Iroa what I really did. He still doesn't know all the facets to my personality."

"Then that just makes you a liar. What, were you afraid that if you told him the truth that he would not have slept with you?"

Kraana's eyes narrowed dangerously and she stilled all body movement, now a statue.

"Careful what you say, girl. Between us, we both know that you'd take any excuse to sheathe your suit and willingly lay with that human of yours. Probably more than I would figure, considering the fact that he cannot impregnate you."

Fed up, Nya straightened her own posture, managing to rise to Kraana's height as her own eyes diminished into slits. Her fingers balled into fists and the omni-cuff rattled against her wrist noisily.

"You right," Nya acknowledged defiantly. "Sam _is_ my human, and I would take any excuse to be intimate with him because I _care_ about him so damn much! That's something that you don't seem to have with my father, Kraana. You two obviously don't love each other like Sam and I do. Heh, I think I now see why you two got together. There probably weren't many choices amongst you while toiling in Xen's lab. You looked for the best lay possible and my father just happened to be the unlucky pick. Tell me I'm wrong, Kraana."

The older quarian looked horrified and she quickly shook her head. "No," she muttered. "That's not it. I didn't marry your father because of that!"

"I don't think so," Nya fiercely panted, a crazy grin gripping her lips. "You got together just for the sex, right? It probably just tears you up inside to see Sam and I happier than you, right? You might just go into palpitations if you even _knew_ how happy Sam and I get when we're intimate. Sam pays attention to my every move when we're in bed together and he goes out of his way, sometimes at the expense of his own health, to make me happy. I doubt my father is as generous. Tell me I'm wrong."

"Shut… your… _mouth!_ " Kraana clutched at her stomach, as if an ache was steadily growing there.

"Just tell me I'm wrong. Is that so hard? Tell me I'm wrong!"

"You don't know anything!"

"I don't? Then why can't you tell me that I'm wrong?"

Time skipped a beat in a crazed moment as eye contact finally broke with a sickening wrench.

"I WON'T!" Kraana screamed as she stepped forward, fist clenched as she prepared to strike Nya firmly.

All of a sudden, Nya shot her unrestrained arm upward and grabbed Kraana's clenched fist out of midair, causing the woman to snarl in surprise. Nya similarly growled, as she held on tight, not letting go as the older quarian began to panic – yet Nya still clutched Kraana's fist strongly. Her fingers tightened, crushing Kraana's hand and her stepmother yowled, crumpling to her knees in pain.

Panting with the effort, Nya towered over Kraana, teeth firmly clenched as she reigned victorious.

"You… will… never… touch me again, _bitch!_ "

Nya emphasized her final word by bringing her booted foot up and planted it firmly upon Kraana's chest. Kraana only had a second to comprehend what was going on before Nya unleashed a ferocious kick, sending her stepmother flying across the room to crash into a stack of boxes, some toppling and clonking her on the head, making her dazed.

Seething, Kraana shakily got to her feet, trying her best not to wobble in place. Eyes focusing onto Nya again, she bared her teeth underneath her visor and growled.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life," her words crept out. "I'll kill you. I swear to the Ancestors I'll-,"

She raised an arm to strike Nya but another limb quickly reached out from behind the woman and forcefully yanked her back. Kraana hissed in fury, but not without stiffening in surprise when she learned who it was that was holding her back, one who had suddenly entered the room without her even knowing.

"Now that's enough," Iroa sternly said, disappointment encroaching in his voice. "I told you not to harm my daughter, Kraana. You think I'm going to let you near her again?"

" _I've_ gone too far?!" Kraana practically shrieked. "She attacked _me!_ She's nothing but a vicious, little-,"

Iroa ignored his wife as she continued to babble. With a resigned sigh, he vigorously grabbed her by the shoulders and shunted her in the direction of the door. In disbelief, Kraana tried to fight back but Iroa had finally had enough. With a venomous grunt, Iroa shoved the protesting Kraana back out into the hallway, shutting the door on her, allowing for quiet to permeate the air.

Clutching her chest, Nya sourly eyed her father's back. "So _now_ you care, all of a sudden?"

"I never did stop," Iroa sighed as he continued to stare at the closed door.

"You think your little act of charity is going to endear me to you?"

"That's what I've been trying to do this entire time."

Nya just shakily breathed a laugh, the adrenaline high not beginning to wear off yet. "Yeah, well, you failed. You failed in the most spectacular way a person could fail."

Finally, Iroa turned, sadness lidding his eyes. "Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?" he asked woefully.

Nya lifted her chained arm. "You could release me, for a start."

It was obviously painful for Iroa to glance between the bond holding his daughter to the table and Nya's determined face.

"How can you guarantee that you won't leave if I do?"

"I can't," Nya replied immediately. "Because I _will_ leave. I will go right back to Sam and I will leave you behind, out of my life for good."

"T-Then…" Iroa's voice was now trembling quite badly, "I… don't think that I… should release you."

Nya's arms dropped as her brain was performing cartwheels trying to make sense of what her father's intentions were.

"I'm going to use a bit of Sam's vernacular here," Nya said flatly as she now moved to sit atop the table, her hands gesticulating firmly. "What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?"

Iroa jolted. "What… what did you just say to me?!"

"I'm not apologizing for my language because you deserve every curse directed your way. You say you want me to look upon you as a father while you've been resorting to dishonesty and now kidnapping to get your way. What kind of idiot do you take me for? I'm not going to spontaneously start caring about you simply because you tell me to. Whatever, keep me here in this room. I really don't care anymore. You know what? You and Kraana really do deserve each other. The two of you definitely have a similar amount of crazy in you."

"Nyareth," Iroa pleaded as he dropped to his knees. "What do you want me to do? I'm begging you, please. Do you want me to give you a house on Rannoch? You want me to promise you money, anything you ask for? Anything, just… please. What do you want from me?"

Nya mockingly tilted her head in thought, taking a pregnant pause to draw out the tension.

"Actually, you know what? A house on the homeworld would be nice."

"Really?" Iroa chirped hopefully.

" _NO!_ " Nya roared so loudly that Iroa fell over himself. "Ancestors above! You have to be the stupidest person I've ever met. Bribing me with a house, I mean… wh-what the hell is wrong with you?! And I'm supposed to somehow be related to you?! _Argh!_ In all honesty, I've actually figured out something you can do for me right now."

"W-What is i-it?" Iroa trembled.

"Get out of my sight. Just leave me alone."

Iroa scrambled to his feet, his arms raised in appeasement, in a soothing manner. "Okay… shh, Nyareth. I'll go, if that's what you really want. I'll come back when you're in a more amenable mood."

"Don't even bother coming back," Nya shook her head as crossed her arms, still seated upon the table that she was chained to. "After you leave, there will be no one else in this universe that I will have hated more than you. After today… I will no longer even consider you to be my father. You will just be the idiot who impregnated my mother. You're a _sperm bank_ , nothing more."

After all the abuse hurled at him by his daughter, this was the final straw for Iroa. Something broke inside him, the one thing that had caused him to have a tender hope throughout this entire debacle. Now, with the dwindling flame finally extinguished, there was nothing left within Iroa to assuage the mental gash that Nya had just dealt him. All he could muster were strangled gulps and single syllables, but he could figure out nothing to say that could make the pain go away.

Finally cowed, bashed to his lowest point as he truly realized that he had indeed failed at what he set out to do, Iroa trundled in a daze over to the door, arms deadweight, legs feeling like lead. He could not bear to even look Nya in the eye anymore, not after knowing how much she despised him.

And he knew it was all his fault.

Before he left into the hallway, he halfheartedly motioned for a guard to stand watch inside the room. The gesture was more meant to keep Kraana and any undesirable people away from Nya in addition to making sure that she would be all right and unharmed.

With Nya's final words echoing repeatedly in his head, Iroa felt like sobbing.

* * *

 _Aberration Sequence #39_ _  
_ _Carmel, CA, Date Unknown, 3:51 PM_

It just never ended.

I had lost count of how many times the same pinprick of light would shoot into me, absorb me from within, and spit me out on the other side of the portal with as much care as a baggage handler. Each time, it felt like an incredibly localized headache was boring into my brain, drilling through layer upon layer of gray matter until it reached my malleable center.

Every death hurt. Each time Vhen or I perished on whatever battleground was rotated into our lineup, the cycle started all over again. I couldn't explain how the link worked… without fail, after one of us gained the advantage over the other, we would be thrust into a new world, a new universe, and set at each other's throats one more time, stupidly hoping for a different outcome.

How many times did I go through this? I couldn't say. I've seen things, embodied people, been to places unimaginable by a paltry human brain. I've gone from being a krogan, headbutting my foes upon the cracked plains of Tuchanka, to possessing a whirling dervish in an ancient turian warrior, cracking blades with Vhen as we leapt upon shattered pillars that had comprised a pre-nuclear city, and to being some sort of synthetic construction, wrenching apart limbs from my brethren as we tumbled in the vacuum of space, shielded from the bombardment of cosmic rays as spare wires tumbled in zero gravity and leaking fluids froze in sub-zero temperatures. All that and more. So much more.

The worst part of all this was that none of these transitions from one universe to the next occurred without pain, and I had to endure this one after the other, time after time after time again. At this point, I was seriously considering if dying for real would be a more preferable option rather than rehash this visual metaphor for insanity one more time.

How did this hallucination work?! I still was no closer to figuring out the secret! This fantasy was coming dangerously close to bleeding into what I perceived was reality, for I had been trapped here way too long to even decisively determine what was real anymore.

I still knew, for now, that Eyzn had put me under with his harebrained compound, forcing my mind to conjure up these images and stimulate parts of my nervous system without me even interacting with such events in the real world. Like any drug, it would wear off eventually. That is, unless I was perceiving time in this purgatory at a diluted rate, meaning that for every "day" I spent in this hallucination might only translate to a few seconds in real time. The brain really does a good job with distorting reality, given the right circumstances, and it was probably just fortuitous that Eyzn had managed to stimulate the right parts of my cortex in order to put me in this state.

But like all fantasies, there existed a trick to get you out of it. Like people suffering from psychosis, if you mentally "catch" yourself before or during entering a dissociative state, it is possible to snap yourself back to normal. I just needed to find out the "catch" to this place so that I could finally leave.

But after an uncountable number of cycles from battling with Vhen, I was still no closer to finding that catch.

Just as I presumed that this cycle would be no different. This time, I was back in my regular human body, carelessly deposited on a damp, grassy hill. Low hanging stratus clouds lazily skimmed firm mountains nearby, a few drizzling sprinkles splashing onto my face. Salty wind – an ocean wind – blew in from the sea, sending the grass fluttering in the breeze, along with a nearby tree, based on the rustling of leaves.

Aha. I was wondering how many times it would take before I would arrive at this place.

Carmel, California.

A graveyard.

Specifically, my sister's graveyard.

Heaving myself to with a sigh, I brushed off my hands and went to hunt for the headstone that I remembered was at the top of the hill, the one with the lone tree perched upon it. This was more out of habit – I merely wished to be respectful, seeing as I was here. I passed by rows and rows of the solid stone blocks before I finally arrived at the one bearing my last name upon it. Folding my arms in front of me, I read the name inscribed onto the monument thrice over with a sigh.

Taylor McLeod. Taken way too young. God, if only she could see me now.

I knelt down by the grave and place my hand upon the headstone respectfully. I was not a religious man, so prayer was not so much my forte, but I do believe that a silent deference is wholly appropriate to times like these. It gives us the impression that we are treating the departed with the reverence that they deserve, which ultimately helps with our peace of mind.

There was another headstone next to my sister's, but it was different somehow. I had not remembered there being a neighbor to Taylor the last time I had ventured here, but this grave looked several years old at least. Curious, I shuffled over to the grave and tried to make out the words, but they were obscured by grime and moss. With my hand, I wiped away the clutter, taking care to make sure that each letter was visible, but I stopped after I was three-fourths of the way there. I could fill in the blanks after that.

 _Nyareth'McLeod,_ the headstone proclaimed. _Beloved wife to Sam._

I didn't bother to clear away the years she had lived, nor the description detailing what she had died from.

For the longest time, I didn't even move a muscle. I just sat there, silently brooding, reading the name on the headstone over and over again. _Nyareth. Nyareth. Nyareth_.

My Nya.

I bit my lip, unconsciously noting the omission upon what should have adorned the grave's inscription. It just said, " _Wife_." It didn't say anything else. Something was missing. The most important thing of all, apparently. What Nya wanted to be, most of all. What I was hesitant to give her.

Soft feet upon grass shuffled behind me and I regretfully shut my eyes. There was no need to even guess who might be disturbing me at this moment. I've spent too much time here to even hope for a slight deviation.

"So," I muttered without even looking behind me. "Back again, then?"

"Back again," Vhen replied after a moment's pause.

I gave a mirthless chuckle. "This is how it's going to be for us? Just us killing each other with no end in sight?"

"I think you know how this is going to go for the both of us."

"I suppose you're right," I murmured grimly as I finally took a backwards glance. Vhen was indeed standing just a few feet behind my back, once again in his quarian form, clad in his pea-green enviro-suit, a pistol clenched in his right hand and held against his hip. I then reached out and touched Nya's headstone once more, resigned to my fate. "Is this what I have to look forward to?"

"Depends," Vhen said. "It is _a_ future. Maybe it will be yours someday, maybe not. One way or another, we'll all be in the ground at some point."

"At least you were first," I managed a smile. I then gestured to my head, finding myself utterly tired out. "Go on, do what you're here to do. Get it over with so I don't have to see this anymore."

Vhen must have shrugged at my capitulation and I soon heard the click of a thermal clip being slotted into a pistol.

"I'll see you in the next life, then."

"Looking forward to it," I said tightly, without humor.

The quarian shuffled to the side, now standing directly behind me as I continued to face the two graves.

"If it matters to you at all," Vhen said as he raised the pistol at the back of my head, the weapon giving off a low thrum, "she would have been better off with me."

Maybe it was all the combined abuse that had been wrought upon me. Maybe it had been the constant back-and-forth seesawing between the choices I perceived as the right ones. Maybe it had been Vhen's words that had finally done it, but everything seemed to finally take its toll upon me right then and there. It all clicked. The missing piece that I had been seeking. In this wretched place, upon the graves of my sister and my wife, I finally did understand the answer to the most important quandary in my life.

My life was utterly disposable in this hallucination, but back out there, in the real world, it was fragile. I had no idea just how brazenly I'd been handling my own life, but nothing could have been clearer than it was right now. I could die here, without consequence, but if I died for real, I would be leaving behind everything that was important to me. I was special to someone, and to be so selfish in the event that I did pass away without performing this one specific task, then the repercussions would be unconscionable. Simply too terrible to imagine.

What would be of the legacy that I would leave behind? A grieving widow? No, there had to be more. Much more.

Nothing else mattered.

Nothing. Not my misgivings, nothing my pitiful excuses could defend against. I now realized that… I truly wanted what Nya had been so desiring as well. With all my heart, I found that craving within me for more, for what would truly make the both of us happy.

I wanted a child.

I wanted Nya to go through the joy of having a child. I wanted to see her face glow, completely awash with happiness. I wanted that for her. I wanted a boy – or a daughter! – just a little one to hold and be reminded that I was both loved and brought love to others, to know that I actually meant something in someone's life.

This struck me so profoundly that I was ashamed for having previously being flaky on rearing a child without my genes. I think that I had just come to the realization that I did not care anymore. I simply did not give a shit. I just hoped that my selfishness could be forgiven in time and that I could begin to make up for my boorish behavior as soon as possible.

And then we could welcome a child into our world. Together.

Rain then beaded on my neck and there was a faint click as Vhen's gun cocked. Grass tickled my palms. Dirt mashed into my jeans. A cool breeze. A bird chirping.

Scraping from the firing pin. Nearly there, now.

 _No_. I was not ready to leave. Not yet.

My head tilted upward, breath shortening. I now knew what I had to do.

From the depths of my jacket, I plunged my hand deep and grasped a worn handle that I had not even known was there, yet at the same time… I did. I yanked the knife free, the blade slicing through the thin rain as I sprang to my feet, malevolence etched onto my face. Vhen's eyes widened as I whirled, trying to track my every movement but it was too late.

My knife trailed through the air and cut into Vhen's suit near his collar, creating a hissing noise. Not even embedded an inch, I swiped the blade downward, creating a thin diagonal cut that opened up Vhen's enviro-suit across his front. He screamed, but it was drowned out by a thunderclap, and he dropped his pistol. Blood flowed freely down his chest and he sunk to his knees, clutching at the wound.

Quickly, I reached for the discarded pistol and ejected all of the thermal clips. Having collected them in my hand, I hurled them down the hill where they rolled to who knows where, never to be found again. To Vhen, who was still groaning in pain, I turned back and tossed him the pistol where it landed at his feet, covered in water from the rain.

The quarian made a noise that sounded very much like he was in agony. He struggled to meet my eyes after examining his own blood-stained palm. Vhen groped for the downed pistol, dumbfounded that I would be so apparently stupid to give him his weapon back, like he was questioning if this was going to be a repeat from our little scuffle back in London.

Yet this time, I knew that things would be different.

"W-Why?" he groaned out.

I breathily laughed and flung my arms out to the side, arms dripping rainwater, hair plastered to my forehead, eyes wild. "Because I've figure it all out. You've got no more thermal clips in the gun. That thing has the capability to fire one more shot, but if you pull that trigger, the pistol will explode because it won't be able to contain the intense heat, since it has no clips to take the heat. So you will be able to fire it once. Only once."

Vhen, now pointing the pistol back at me and clutching his chest at the same time, shakily got back to his feet. "I don't understand," he whispered. "Why would you give me a gun when you know I'll kill you with it?"

"Are you going to?" I smirked.

"Why wouldn't I?"

Now I smiled broadly as I pointed to the wide tear in Vhen's suit, exposing pale gray skin and dark blood smoothly flowing downward beyond the ragged edges of the rubbery material. "Because you've got a much bigger problem than me right now."

Vhen now seemed to perceive the danger that he had now been exposed to and he staggered as he considered the wound and what it meant, completely beside himself. "No…" he moaned.

"Oh yes. I'm afraid that if you kill me, you will have just condemned yourself to a slow and painful death. That slash I made was not meant to kill, just to wound. Well, not meant to kill you right away as I don't think all the antibiotics in the world can save you now, with that big of a suit breach. If you shoot me, you rid yourself of going out quickly and you will die in agony as your lungs constrict and your intestines begin to fail on you."

"That cannot be," Vhen shook his head. "It cannot end like this! I can just kill you now – start the cycle over again!"

"True," I mused as the barrel of the pistol was now pressed against my forehead. "But you're forgetting something. This is _my_ hallucination, not yours. My consciousness will head someplace else but my projection of you will still remain here. I will still know that you will remain here to die from the worst allergic reaction a quarian could imagine. This is not exactly a clean place, Earth. By now, you're probably already infected with millions of microbes capable of producing several different lethal reactions in your body. You can kill me, or…" I now leaned in further, pressing the barrel more firmly against my head, "you can choose to go out quickly rather than slowly. It's all on you now."

For a wild moment, I had the inkling that Vhen would not follow my advice, purely to spite me. It was only when the beginnings of a cough began to wrack his body did he finally pull the pistol away from me in alarm.

"You… bastard," Vhen choked out, his fingers still lightly prodding the large slash across his chest.

"Don't I know it," I agreed.

Mustering up his courage, Vhen straightened himself out. To his credit, I have to admit that when the time came for him to make his decision, Vhen managed to finally see the sense in what I had been telling him. He took a singular step backward and raised the pistol to his temple, the hate in his eyes finally gone, complete acceptance replacing it.

"I wish you luck… Sam," Vhen gritted out as his finger began to clench on the trigger.

"I'll definitely need it," I tiredly acknowledged as I steeled myself. I would not turn away.

The pistol crashed and there was silence.

* * *

At least until a gaggle of voices managed to pierce the darkness.

" _That's odd,"_ one said _. "Seems to be some increased EKG activity on the monitor. Take a look at that."_

" _Probably a glitch,"_ another murmured _. "Eyzn said these instruments are twitchy when it comes to humans. Maybe an electrode slid to the wrong place?"_

" _Possible, but unlikely. Think we should raise the dosage? What if it's not a glitch and he wakes?"_

" _Don't bother, no one's ever been roused from this stuff before. They said it would take a miracle for anyone to do so."_

" _Well, the instruments are reading an increased heart rate and brain waves that are perfectly standard for someone noticeably awake!"_

" _Yvarh, look at the human! Does he look awake to you?"_

Actually… funny story about that…

As my eyes snapped open to reveal sterile, white lighting raining down on me, my dilated pupils blinked once and then everything came into focus. Way too rapidly. Something was different. Everything had changed.

Oxygen flooded my lungs, my heart pounded against my chest, my skin tingled with electricity. I was free.

This was… I was awake. After all this time, I was finally awake! Hello Rannoch! Sam is back!

I felt like laughing, but something was preventing my jaw from opening all the way. Right, Eyzn had placed a mask over my face. I was still strapped down onto this cold table by the wrists and ankles, technically imprisoned, at least in the physical sense. Until I realized what was truly different.

Strength filled my muscles, emboldened by my success. They seemed to ripple and distort, veins bulging. Cords within my arms, running across my chest tightened and strained past their limits, creating an unfamiliar, but wonderful pain that gratefully made itself known to me. This was new, I never recalled that I looked so defined before… unless I had inhaled some substance with a few adverse side effects.

Side… effects…

Hah, _now_ I really felt like laughing.

I flexed my arms, testing my bonds and finding, to my surprise, a slight looseness in the straps. Almost as if I could simply… flex… and…

The fearful glances from two quarian technicians, the voices from before, came into view as they suddenly hovered over me. I dumbly stared back, not even attempting to pretend to be asleep. It was no use, I had already locked eyes with both of them so they knew for certain that I was awake. The quarians chattered to themselves, trading frantic accusations as well as dictations to put me under once more.

No fucking way. In no way, shape or form, was I going back into dreamland.

These quarian morons would find out the hard way what happens when you step between a human and his wife. A really, really, really pissed off human, at that. They had no idea at what kind of hell would be unleashed before them today, a hell that they in turn helped to create.

Why don't I show them right now?

With a roar encapsulating the fear I held for the safety of my wife and the desperation I so had to escape, I savagely wrenched my arms as hard as I could muster against the bands around my wrists, every single fiber in my body straining to the maximum limit. I screamed and screamed, uncaring about how my throat would handle the abuse. Multiple cords and veins popped out from my skin, which turned more and more red. Spittle flew, caught by the mask over my mouth, and a blood vessel in my eye burst, staining it partially red.

And then there was a sickening ripping noise.

The bonds snapped away.

* * *

 **A/N: Whew, this was probably one of the most intense chapters I've ever written. And the longest, as well. Let me know what you think! Things are only going to get more fun in the next chapter!**

 **As an aside, knowing that some of the statements and revelations made in the middle of the chapter might be disturbing for some, none of the views the characters hold in the story represent any of the views that I, as the author, hold. I like my writing to be as apolitical as possible, but I won't shy away from delving into controversial topics if they add to the story. So please, if you think that this story is trying to make a political statement, I can assure you that that is certainly not the case. This is all in the name of making a story and even fiction can be as ugly as real life.**

 **Upon the Beach/Sword and Shield: "Angering Mantis" by Justin Burnett from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_. Burnett's cue "Angering Mantis" has the perfect slow build of a groaning synth line, symbolizing the mental conflict Sam is under going at the beginning of the chapter, before it breaks out into an all-out panic and slowly resolves into a calmer, pulsating rhythm - a good companion to the medieval conflict.**

 **World War: "Tiger Battle" by Steven Price from the film _Fury_. Personally, this is one of the most inventive soundtracks to have come out in recent years, in my opinion. Steven Price's score disregards classical composing for a more modern take, emphasizing the frenzied combat and panicked fear soldiers undergo in war. Perfect music for a battle backdrop.**

 **Graveyard/Breaking the Nightmare (Sam's Theme Reprise): "I Live (Electronic Version)" by Brian Tuey/Jack Wall from the video game _Call of Duty: Black Ops III_. Just like any memorable soundtrack, themes occasionally reprise themselves during dramatic moments. This would be a good moment to reinstate Sam's theme in this period of his life.**


	15. Chapter 15: Tempest

I recall one time when I had been threatening Vhen years ago (when he was being his usual irritating self) that he had caught me in the worst possible state of mind: awake, sober, and very pissed off.

Needless to say, after being restrained and drugged by alien nationals for an unknown period of time, it was safe to assume that I was back in that state.

Now there was going to be hell to pay.

In retrospect, I would have found this whole situation to be both rather ludicrous and amusing at the same time, were it not for the fact that I was still completely inundated within a dangerous environment and that my fight-or-flight chemical response was ringing all sorts of bells within my head. As it was, no one was laughing – least of all me. Fortunately, at the moment, I was not at all afraid nor intimidated at my precarious position. All I had right now was rage. A whole lot of rage. Rage at being captured, at being beaten up, at being drugged into a dissociative state, at being forcibly separated from my wife – the list goes on.

I couldn't change the past any more than I could stop the galaxy from expanding… but I sure could make things a lot more difficult for my captors. What the heck, it was the best idea I had and it certainly sounded good to me. Time for a little ruckus, methinks.

Despite the physical limitations that had been placed upon my body, muscular motion was surprisingly unimpeded for me – the briefest action occurring anyway with a mere thought, shearing away any impediments. When I had wrenched my arms to free myself from the restraints that held my wrists to the operating table, I was only vaguely surprised at how easily the thick cloth bonds parted. _Vaguely_ , mind you, like I had been expecting this ludicrous outcome all along, despite all common sense. My body brimmed with energy, my forehead hummed, my vision speckled and flickered, my breath slowed to a crawl. The two quarian technicians in the room that had been attending to my previously unconscious form leaped back from the table upon which I was restrained, understandably shocked. They shrieked an alarm, but I was too busy concerning myself with freeing the rest of my body to pay attention to what they had to say, still trying to shake off the grogginess that accompanied my being roused.

There was a thick belt snaked across my shirtless waist pinning me down. With my arms freed, I reached down and snapped it away at where the metal met the mesh. I rapidly popped the electrodes stuck upon my chest almost as an afterthought, throwing them aside. Two more cloth bonds kept my feet planted to the table at the ankles. Now that my upper torso was able to maneuver about, it was an easy endeavor ripping those away as well. The gas dispersal mask covering my mouth was a lost cause – there was some kind of locking mechanism keeping it upon my head, a trio of straps angrily rubbing at my skin and scalp, beginning to chafe. I kept it on for the time being, knowing that there were other matters to concern myself with.

Now fully freed, shredded cloth dangling everywhere, I leaped off the table. I had to momentarily drop on all fours to steady myself, as I was still a little woozy from both the metal repercussions of the fantasy I had clawed my way out of, as well as whatever physical side effects Eyzn's toxin had infested into my system.

A growl worked its way out of my raw throat as my vision continued to warble. The light hurt my eyes at the harsh beams speared my retinas. My perception of color seemed to be off, as everything seemed to be several shades brighter than what would be perceived as normal. Circular halos of rainbow mirages sparkled from time to time as the walls of the operating room appeared to tremble, like the entire ship was fearful of me in my conscious state. Sweat glistened on my chest, shimmering in the hygienic illumination. All my joints ached, especially as I rose, but I did not concern myself with such trifles.

A sudden headache erupted in my skull, momentarily stunning me as I was rooted to the spot in pain. I groaned as my hands clutched the afflicted area, creating more irritation as muscle clusters tightened far beyond their normal range. Tendrils pulled at my vision, my teeth chattered and felt like ice, and I imagined feeling every single brain signal pulse down my spine painfully like a bolt of electricity. The invisible hand that tormented me quickly released its grip though, leaving me horribly wobbling in a room while I tried to fight the chaos that continued to linger, desperately willing everything back into normality.

Naively, I still held onto the hope that I could go back to some semblance of what I imagined normality to be. If only I realized that such a concept was now lost to me forever. The next few moments would only exacerbate things further.

One of the quarian technicians in the operating room with me – a woman – trembled as she plucked a scalpel from a nearby tray and timidly held it in my direction as I slowly gained back my motor functions, now proceeding at a slow, plodding pace towards her.

"Stay back, you animal!" she screamed, her eyes wide as dinner plates. The pathetic little knife shook heavily in her grip, not intimidating me in the slightest. The fact that she was brandishing a weapon at me, no matter how small, merely angered me to no end. She dared to dictate herself after what her kind did to _me?!_ "Stay where you are! D-Don't make me come any c-closer! Don't make-,"

I did not listen, needless to say.

With a roar capable of shattering the world, I leapt forward in a brazen charge, smashing aside a surgical cart as I did so, creating a monumental cacophony of clattering instruments. The woman shrieked and made a hasty swing in my direction with the scalpel. She missed by a mile, allowing me to harmlessly push her weapon hand out of the way.

I then punched the woman in the gut.

The blow itself was so savage that she folded in half in an instant. The quarian retched, and I could see a faint spray of puke stain the inside of her visor. With both the wind and the fight now knocked out of her, she crumpled.

Amazed, I gazed at my hand, which slowly began to uncurl from its fist. Had I really punched her that hard? I was only trying to keep her from making a scene, but now it looked like I had gone and nearly killed the woman. Where the hell did this kind of strength come from?

Questions had to be saved for later. There was still the woman's compatriot to worry about, though.

The male technician had plucked a pistol from somewhere, intent on putting me down for good, and was in the middle of holding it up to aim at my center of mass – seemingly too slowly, I might add. Only marginally wondering why everything seemed to be transpiring in slow-motion, I bounded forward effortlessly and batted the man's gun arm out of the way. The quarian's finger instinctively clenched on his trigger, which discharged the gun near my ears with a quick flash and an enormous bang.

Both the quarian and I howled as our ears were uncomfortably rung by the explosion of the gun in such a confined area. Even more incensed, I reached out and grabbed the gun by the barrel, ignoring the feeling of the scorching hot metal upon my palm. I wrenched my body and the pistol left the quarian's hands so easily he might as well given it to me. Odd indeed, seeing as I had noticeably broken all of the quarian's fingers from the disarming maneuver, indicated by how he was now screaming and holding his hand.

All of my actions were occurring so smoothly it was like I was a preprogrammed machine – flawless and efficient. I flipped the pistol's grip into my palm, a showboat maneuver, and sleekly lowered my aim downwards a tad before I pulled the trigger for the second time in this room, my ears now prepared for the audible barrage.

The quarian fell as a hot jet of blood spat from his leg, upon his thigh, and he began to cry incoherently as he grasped the affected limb as best he could. While he was moaning in pain next to his prone cohort, my fingers groped for the disassembly levers upon the pistol and, once they had been thrown, I broke the gun in two and threw the useless halves to the opposite sides of the room, keeping my eyes locked upon the quarian all the while.

"My leg!" the quarian screamed, eyes darting all over the place behind his darkened visor. "Oh Keelah! My leg! You shot me in the leg!"

"Thanks for the update," was my placid reply, somewhat bemused at how the quarian was carrying on.

"Ahh! It's still bleeding! I'm going… I think I'm going to die. Please! Please do something! It's not stopping!"

Far be it from me to lend aid to someone who did try to shoot me first. I simply stood by dispassionately not out of cruelty, but curiosity. The quarian was too into hysterics to understand that his leg actually wasn't bleeding anymore (there was only a small splatter of blood upon the entry site – the bullet had harmlessly exited through the back of the thigh), nor was he in any danger of dying. Of course, one could be led to believe such a thing, with the way this man was carrying on.

"Help me! Kee…laaahhh! It huuuurts!"

"Yeah, yeah," I nodded in disinterest as I continued to appraise the quarian. "That's kind of the usual outcome that comes with being shot."

"Just finish me off, you bastard! Quit standing there and kill me! Aaarrrgghhh! It… really… _hurts!_ "

You know, I was actually astonished as I watched the quarian continue to bitch and moan. That's really what it was: bitching and moaning. When I could vividly recall my own experiences with getting shot (in more vital areas even) I know for a fact that I wasn't bellyaching in a manner quite like this. Kind of sad, really, watching this man sob for an injury that wasn't worth-

" _AAAAHHH!_ "

To be honest, he was acting more like a _child_ as this went on – certainly not like a man.

"Shut up!" I roared in the quarian's face, finally fed up as I indicated his afflicted leg. The quarian recoiled in fear, partly because the mask over my face concealed most of my expression, only letting the blind hate in my eyes spew forth with vigor. "You're a moron! You're not dying! You're not even remotely close to dying! Can't you see you've only got a flesh wound, you fucking idiot?! Look, your suit's automatic medi-gel dispensers have even sealed up around the entry site! You're not in danger of bleeding out, and certainly not from dying of an infection."

The quarian abruptly quit his insufferable caterwauling as his cries subsided to sniffles. He looked from his bloody wound, then to me, then back to his wound, then back to me, all while his face was lighting up more and more with relief.

I was so annoyed with the man's antics at that point that I finally clocked the quarian on the side of the head with a closed fist, knocking him almost unconscious and cutting off any more whining from him.

"Enough of that nonsense," I muttered to myself, wringing my hand out after delivering the solid blow.

My hand was numb from what I initially thought was full-on punching a quarian's helmet, but as time went on, I realized that the numbing feeling was not dissipating. Rather, the sensation had spread throughout my entire body, slightly tingling my nerves. Blood pumped at a slower pace, turning my extremities a whiter shade. I fluttered my eyelids and stumbled a bit, momentarily caught in a shaky state of mind. Now blinking rapidly, I came to my senses and righted myself standing among the faintly stirring quarian bodies.

 _Think, Sam! Think! You can't linger here – you need to find Nya! You need to find your wife!_

"Nya… wife… right," I slurred drunkenly, the mask over my mouth still making my words sound all muffled. I moved to the hallway door before a flash caught my eye, stopping me in my tracks.

I nearly did not recognize myself in the full body mirror that hung just to the side of the door. My appearance was so jarring that I had to take at least ten seconds to stare at my reflection just so that I could convince myself that I was still not hallucinating.

Apart from the frightful look the mask added to my expression, my shirtless body was also marred with a litany of healing cuts in the process of being smoothed over, courtesy of the application of medi-gel upon them. I had no idea where my shirt had gone to, come to think of it, as that was the only article of clothing that was entirely missing from my person. The faded tattoos upon my chest had been gradually nicked over time by the plethora of wounds that I managed to accumulate, scarring my torso. I had not been completely devoid of scars like these for a while now, yet the sight was still dismal every time I acknowledged that tidbit.

Yet the most staggering change in my appearance was the fact that all of my muscles, at least that I could see, had become rigid, more defined. Cords of muscle bulged outward far more than I was used to, the skin taut around these areas, revealing jagged veins – which very much looked like a common symptom of dehydration. These areas of definition ached, a throbbing yet welcome pain, that suggested that this was no façade, that something chemical had altered within me to create this… _monstrous_ state. I felt powerful. Invincible, even. Energy rippled throughout me – pulsating, growing. I soaked in it, fed upon it, but the accompanying pain helped bring me down from the clouds. Even breathing hurt, with each inhalation my throat gave a stab like my windpipe had gone rigid, injuries notwithstanding.

Despite my changed look, it didn't take me long to determine exactly what had done this. Oh yes, I knew _exactly_ how this happened, why I was going to look like a Mr. Universe contestant for another hour or so. But my preening would just have to wait. I had bigger fish to fry. A wife to find.

And a certain stepbrother to pummel.

So, without a care in the world anymore, I cracked my knuckles in preparation for the onslaught that was awaiting me in the hallway, just knowing that danger lurked on the other side. Wildly anticipating what was to come, I charged the door as it opened to let me pass, exposing a darkened corridor comprised of the same rough and blocky metal that served as the standard for all quarian architecture these days.

Immediately upon exiting the room, my shoulder made contact with a poor sap that had been standing just outside the threshold – not anyone I recognized, though. The quarian screamed as I crushed him along the opposite wall of the hall, never having seen the blow coming. One-hundred-and-eighty pounds (plus change) of human versus a paltry one-hundred-and-thirty pound quarian is not even a fight to begin with. With the amount of momentum I had accumulated, it felt like I had been pushing along a gigantic pillow. The injured quarian slid to the ground as he clutched his ribs, coughing heavily.

There were a bunch of noises coming to my left. I looked down the dim hallway of brown, greasy metal and, to my chagrin, beheld a gaggle of at least ten quarians standing almost placidly by, all frozen in shock as they had watched a human unexpectedly burst out of a room to smash one of their own in their presence. As the quarians were all young and inexperienced, they did not immediately go for their weapons in an attempt to subdue me. I probably would have been downed by now if any of them were actual soldiers. Lucky me.

Unlucky them.

Kicking aside the first quarian I had dropped, making him moan with pain, I cracked my neck and tensed my muscles, a crazed smile crackling along my face, one that no one could see behind my mask.

" _Hello_ ," I softly greeted the crowd.

The quarians all emitted shouts in their native language as they now scrambled for weapons.

How foolish.

With a bellow loud enough to tear my throat open for the umpteenth time, I shot forward, my calves straining as much as they could handle, as I tucked in my shoulder for yet another charge. My body found another hapless quarian and I powerfully knocked them down to the ground, the back of the man's helmet bouncing upon the solid floor, causing him to black out. Surging further into the crowd, I swung my fist in a fierce roundhouse, clocking another quarian upon the chin and sending them sprawling as well.

The first casualties.

"Kill him!" someone shouted in a panic. "Kill the bos- _argh!_ "

The loudmouth never finished his sentence because I quickly ran up to him, reached out, bodily grabbed him around the neck and hurled him down the corridor, my arms easily taking the weight of the alien. Two of the quarian's mates got caught in the man's trajectory through the air and they were knocked down once his airborne body collided with them.

Simultaneously roaring and laughing, I was a whirlwind falling deeper into a drunken display of violence and despair. My fists and legs lashed out in a myriad of punches and kicks, the blows hard enough to shatter bone. I was too entrenched into the quarian crowd for them to use their weapons upon me, so they had to resort to their limbs as well as their only method of pacification.

There was a problem heavily weighted against my enemies, with them being unable to utilize their firearms, impotent in a way. Although quarians had a greater relative strength than humans, we have a higher ceiling on our _maximum_ strength. And right now, my maximum strength was as high as it was ever going to get. I could both deliver and receive more damage now that I was in this enhanced state of intoxicated power and bloodlust.

I wanted my wife. These idiots were in my way. I would tear them all apart if it meant achieving my goals.

A few hits rained upon my chest and back as more quarians closed in. They felt like slaps. In response, I sent forceful elbow blows to the people banging on my back, snapping their heads away and leaving cracks in their visors. I hurled punch after punch, my fingers slowly but surely sapping themselves of the ability to feel pain after every blow. Whether it was cushioned flesh wreathed in enviro-suits or the stiff metal of a helmet, no matter how torn up my knuckles were getting, I still felt full of life, full of energy, that I believed I could withstand these punches and give my all forever.

Whenever some bozo had the stupid idea to confront me head-on, my go-to move would always be to roughly grab the front of their enviro-suits, deliver a head-butt for good measure (which stunned them), and slam them against the wall several times until they were knocked out or out of the fight altogether. This entire maneuver took only four seconds to accomplish, and I was even starting to fall into an even rhythm by the end of it.

The quarians, now realizing just how much of a danger I was, all leapt away in panic, but circled around me in the tight hallway, not keen on fleeing just yet. The danger of failure was still more worrisome than the danger of getting beaten up.

A female rushed at me with a knife. I easily caught her wrist without flinching, my eyes narrowed, and I delivered an open handed strike to her elbow. The quarian's arm snapped with a sickening crunch and she let out one of the worst screams I've ever heard come from a person. Everyone in the area flinched at the frightful noises and I kicked the woman away so that she could disengage and tend to her arm.

"Would anyone like to try something that stupid again?" I blurted, full of confidence, yet this time my arrogance could be bolstered by my actions.

And yet there would still be those that would test fate, regardless of the massive barriers.

A young quarian racked the slide on his shotgun suddenly, trying his best to aim at me as quickly as possible, not entirely knowing just how close one needed to be to ruin his plans. Almost casually, I leaned over and shunted the weapon up just as it discharged, creating a massive boom and sending debris and dust raining from the ceiling. After easily ripping the weapon out of the young quarian's hands, I delivered a kick to his kneecap, completely destroying the ligaments and tendons as the protective bone disintegrated from my charged blow. Crippled, the quarian toppled over while I bashed the shotgun against the wall, sending parts flying and rendering it useless.

The rest of the quarians hesitated, torn by indecision. I did not have such issues.

With a roar, I rushed the nearest trooper and pinned him against the wall. "Where's Nya?!" I barked in his face, but he was too terrified to conjure an intelligible answer. I delivered another head-butt, my face cushioned by my mask, but my forehead was cut open and began to bleed. The quarian, however, collapsed.

Yet another quarian charged, but was cut short as my arm shot out and bodily lifted him off the ground by the neck. The alien fruitlessly pounded on my arms, desperate to break free.

"Where's Nya?!" I screamed, blood now starting to trail down my chin from underneath the mask seals, evidence of my aggravated throat.

"I… I…" the quarian stammered.

"Useless!" I bellowed as I slammed the quarian against the wall, rendering him out of the fight.

Onto the next enemy I moved, coming upon him so quickly that this hapless quarian that I had within my sights barely made an effort to defend himself. A few punches later and he was down on the ground, along with a few cracked ribs for good measure. I reached out and ripped the traditional hood off the alien's head, discarding it carelessly in a manner fully intending to be insulting. The orange fabric fluttered to the ground while I wrenched the quarian's helmet to force him to look at me.

"Where is Nya?" I asked more deliberately, voice raw and dangerous.

"I… d-don't know!" the quarian wailed, his arms shaking terribly.

"I've heard that before," I replied flatly before my fist planted itself square in the middle of the quarian's orange visor, creating a complete spiderweb of cracks. The alien shrieked and rolled on the ground, his hands frantically running over his ruined visor as if he was going to plug any holes with his fingers.

There was only one quarian left, with the others either lying unconscious or left severely injured. Still breathing calmly, I stalked forward towards the alien – my final obstacle. Bruises and a few cuts had been added to my skin, but they were minor enough to be ignored. My breath hissed out, my eyes were ablaze, and every limb was wired as tightly as a drum.

With a steady hand, I pointed at the last standing quarian. "Tell me where my wife is," I commanded.

The soldier frantically shook his head at the same time he pulled a pistol from his holster. "Stay back!" he pathetically shouted. "What kind of monster _are_ you?!"

I halted my pace, but I did not back down.

" _Human_ ," was my simple reply. "I'm only what _you_ made me, after all. If you don't have anything that I want to hear, step aside and stay out of my way. I'm going to get my wife and you can't do anything to stop me."

"No!" the quarian cried out. "I mean it! I will shoot you!"

The sheer loyalty instilled in these quarians could be damn annoying sometimes. It was a virtue to be ultimately admired but here, it was just a nuisance. Too mad to even concern myself with the fatal prospects, I shrugged aside the alien's feeble pleas and resumed heading in his direction further down the hall.

The quarian screamed once, twice, for me to stop, but I paid no heed. I meant what I had said: there was truly nothing that could stop me from proceeding further. Only when I was within a few feet of swiping the man's gun away, did I hear a faint click of a trigger and then a flash erupted in the middle of the hallway.

It was too late for me to react. I stupidly remained in place, statue-like, oblivious to the danger of dying. I awaited the slow flower of pain to blossom within me, only for that to fade as the clammy cold shivers of shock could grip me. I had been so close… and now it was all over.

Except it wasn't. I was still standing.

I slowly blinked, knowingly drawing out the action, before I looked myself over in awe. No wounds to be seen upon my torso. Instead of a warm gush of blood spurting from the middle of the chest, everything remained remarkably bare. Incredulous with disbelief, I checked my legs, my right arm, and finally my left arm. To my surprise, there was a new divot steadily weeping blood upon my tricep. A few thick red trails dribbled down, but the wound itself was a glorified scratch. I gingerly felt the cut, rubbing the bright blood between my fingertips, smashing the liquid into my prints, somewhat unsurprised at the lack of pain.

How about that.

The quarian looked astonished, confused that he had managed to miss at point-blank range. Not entirely unexpected from my end, seeing as he had been shaking worse than a Parkinson's patient and therefore ruining his shot.

"Bu…b-but…" the alien mumbled as he took a hasty step backward.

Looking up from my bloody fingers, the only expression my eyes gave could be interpreted as one of pure exasperation.

" _Really?_ " I snarkily mocked to the alien.

If the quarian had the ability to even produce a word, odds are that nothing he could conjure would be able to save him.

Thoroughly enraged, I lunged forward and grabbed two fistfuls of the quarian's enviro-suit, and with a wresting application of force, I lifted the alien well above my head, the overclocked muscles in my arms barely straining with the effort. As I gave a primal roar, I straightened my arms and savagely jumped at the same time, impacting the quarian's back straight into the long light fixture that ran along the ceiling. The quarian jerked and screamed as an uneven current briefly ran through his body, electrocuting him from head to toe. Glass tore into his suit, the light spat and flickered, and gas wisped from the cracked casing. I then let go of the alien, depositing him at my feet, the back of the man's enviro-suit punctured and scorched from the effort.

All finished.

I panted in the lull as I stood above the comatose bodies of the broken quarians. The entire effort had taken me less than half a minute to accomplish. Bruises sprung up upon my skin but very little blood stained it.

 _Oh, Sam. What have you done?_

"What have I done, indeed?" I asked myself as I slowly rotated in place, now understanding that what I had performed here was a miracle – a feat beyond my wildest imaginations.

Nothing could prepare me for the rush of emotions that swarmed me, filling me with dread and uncertainty. This was far outside anything I had ever done before. All these quarians just… felled, beaten into submission. By my own hands. How? How did I do this? _Why_ did I do this?! These were _people_ lying strewn about in my presence. Not just aliens - actual, living people. And I had just torn through them like sheets of paper. I had pounded them, broken them, ground them into dust… but for what? Because they were in my way? Did all of them truly deserve to face the full extent of my fury?

No matter how many times I tried to pass the blame, the horrors kept sinking their teeth into my memory, forever damning me to relive this moment for a good while. The entire time, the words of a nameless soldier kept cropping up in my head.

 _What kind of monster are you?_

"No…" I murmured regretfully as I stepped away from the carnage. "That's not what I am."

 _What kind of monster are you?_

"I'm not like that!"

… _Monster…_

"Jesus Christ…"

… _Monster…_

Servos whirred and I suddenly glanced down toward the hallway. Doors upon all sides of the hallway opened, revealing more and more quarians who were naturally drawn by the sounds of commotion. At the far end, some twenty or thirty meters away, I could see the corridor lead into a large and darkened room – at least before the next grouping of quarians blocked the exit with their bodies.

My heart began to beat faster and the blood surging through my body began to boil. Alarmed, I felt my hands ball up once more as everything began to feel a bit more gritty. Copper on the tongue. Acrid scent of rubber. Dull ringing in ears. It was starting again. The hatred, the rage.

I couldn't stop this from happening again, I realized to my horror.

"Stop," I breathily commanded as I lifted a hand, terror scraping at my skin, causing shivers. "Please… don't…"

Before I could explain in greater detail, or at least muster up a better vocabulary in order to prevent a new wave of violence, one of the faceless quarians near the front of the pack raised his pistol, not even bothering to engage in a dialogue for my surrender, and fired without a pause.

… _Monster_ …

I felt the bullet rush past me with a whiff of air in its wake. My hair ruffled from the passing projectile, the only part of me that had been disturbed.

The gauntlet had been thrown, the line in the sand drawn. All bets were now off. My feeble pleas were useless in the shadow of weapons. The quick and simple peace had been shattered with nary a word. Their only bastion of safety came crumbling down around the quarians, yet they were oblivious to the lion that they had released from the cage.

Heart in throat, breath frozen in lungs, eyes locked straight ahead, all notions of tranquility departed from me. I then stormed straight at the alien crowd.

My shoes stomped upon the grimy grating within the ancient shuttle, all movement fluid yet machine-like. Relentless, pounding – a newfound drive that overrode all survival instincts. The only objective was to attack, to lay waste.

And lay waste I did.

The quarian troopers were not at all ready as I met the front of the crowd headlong and eager. As I passed by each new quarian that had entered the fray, I laid them all out, one by one, with direct punches upon their helmets, a howl punctuating each blow. They all fell.

 _Wham! Wham! Wham!_

Limbs flailed in the air as I practically bowled over every single contender. Bones cracked and snapped. Sockets popped as they were dislocated. Some of the visors crunched as the clear protective covering fractured in jagged lines. All the while I kept at my brisk pace, barely slowing to keep any quarian combatant down for good. None of them here deserved my attention. I just wanted to find the one person that did deserve everything from me.

A soldier moved to block me but I unexpectedly spun in a pirouette while I suddenly grasped the man's suit and used the momentum of the action to throw the alien directly into the wall, denting the surface and dislodging a few pipes in the process, emitting a cover of hissing steam.

" _I JUST… WANT… MY WIFE!_ " I screamed as I savagely slammed my fist into each quarian I passed, endless taunts echoing in my head. Screams and cries sang all around me, a chorus that grew as I left more bodies in my wake. " _LEAVE… US… ALONE!_ "

And then I reached the end of the crowd.

Wheeling to a stop, I was momentarily caught off guard at how quickly I had progressed through this section. I took a quick glance behind me, but this time I was not quite as remorseful when I beheld the litany of bodies strewn around the hallway. Under no circumstances could I dredge up any more sympathy after this gang's blatant attempt to murder me right in the middle of this ship. It was the only saving grace that I could cling onto, that could keep things in my world sane while everything else spiraled into hysteria.

With nothing standing between me and the large room beyond, I was left to progress into the next passage with little wear and tear accumulated. Even at this point, I was still unconcerned where my newfound strength had resulted from, nor did I even stop to marvel any more at how I just decimated a legion of quarians with nothing but my bare fists. It had all been reflex actions on my end – pure instinct. Still, it felt like my body was operating independently of my mind. All I could do was go with the flow.

Upon entering the new area, I blinked my eyes several times to adjust to the dim lighting. A complete maze of gangways and guardrails crisscrossed the room, some bending out of their way to avoid clusters of piping. The room was only three stories tall thereabouts, rendering everything to be cramped and uncomfortable. Condensation soaked the brown metal, turning everything slippery – a sign of a poor humidification system. But between all that, everything in this section all surrounded the raised platform that took up the far wall: the miniature element zero core. The "engine" that powered this shuttle.

Metallic rings circled an orb of solid electric blue light, perhaps only a couple of feet in diameter. A barrier of energy calmly warped in and out of existence, extending the material's influence out a few more feet. Element zero was the lifeblood that powered the galaxy as it was the only substance currently known that enabled the kind of technological prowess that instantaneously elevated the level of sophistication in species. Exposing it to an electric current releases dark matter, which could then be harnessed and then utilized to power anything the imagination could fathom. Ships, weapons, even items as mundane as a toothbrush. Even with my limited knowledge of ship technology, I knew that this sort of eezo allocation was comparatively very little, as determined by the size of the core itself – it didn't take much of it to power a ship this size.

I barely had any more time to gawk at the ship's inner workings because an eruption sounded from above and I ducked, hearing tiny little pings resonate throughout the chassis of the engine room.

"Damn!" I cursed as hugged a fuel silo, taking great care to keep my footsteps light.

I paused for a few seconds, listening intently for any movement upon the upper stories, but the hum from the element zero core was drowning out any noises that would normally be slight enough for my ears to pick up.

Biting my lip underneath the mask, I gingerly peered out from behind the silo, only to jerk my head back as a large flash from one of the upper stories boomed once more in my direction, the noise making the ringing in my ears even worse. Sparks flew as the shot impacted a few feet over my head, raining down on me in a hot hail. The projectiles ejected from the shotgun all missed, but what worried me was that the shooter had a pretty good bead on me. I was weaponless to boot!

Creeping around to where a tall strut stood, I shifted my body sideways, so that I was invisible to whomever was firing up on top. The supports holding the catwalks up provided the perfect cover from my attacker, as they overlapped one after the other upon the ground floor, making it difficult for either of us to lock eyes at our current angles. At this point, I had a pretty good idea of who was doing the shooting, though.

"You're going to have to do better than that if you're trying to kill me, Eyzn!" I called out, weirdly grinning. "You've been dropping the ball as of late."

"Am I?" Eyzn's voice hovered over the steam as a quick shotgun burst followed. I winced, but the sound of the projectiles hitting the wall was nowhere even close to where I was hunkered down. The many obstacles in this place must be throwing my voice all around, distracting Eyzn.

I gave a snarl. The steam was starting to adhere to my exposed skin, beading onto my hair.

"You mean this is what you wanted all along? To be drawn into a one-on-one with you?!"

"Perhaps not quite like that," Eyzn called down, his tone faintly annoyed. "But I am through playing around with you and the company you keep."

He emitted another burst with his shotgun, the report no longer making me jump now that my abused ears had started to filter out the noises in the higher ranges.

"I have to admit," Eyzn continued as he stalked somewhere above, "I wasn't expecting this kind of a reaction out of you, Sam. These feats of strength and agility from someone so unassuming, it's surprising. Is this some sort of latent ability you humans have, going completely mad like a krogan? It's… impressive, no doubt, but still… unexpected."

My resounding laugh bounced all over the walls, giving the noise an evil tinge. I had to clutch my belly for I was laughing so hard. Calming myself, I wiped the few tears of mirth from my eyes as I crouched down and began to move around the core's perimeter, still unseen.

"Oh, you poor fool! Your ignorance is showing. You have no idea what it means to be human as you have clearly demonstrated not knowing _anything_ about our biology, I can tell you that much. Your little gaseous compound is the entire reason I'm like this, ironically enough."

"Impossible! I measured and administered the chemicals myself! A fully compatible levo-neurological anesthetic! Such side effects should not be possible."

I shook with levity, relishing the moment. "You never tested the stuff on any humans before me, did you? Your lack of formal training is all too apparent, for any good doctor knows to never assume that you will get the same outcome in consecutive experiments. Not to mention, you failed your due diligence with my participation. I didn't just get into this animalistic state all on my own! No, this was all made possible… because of _you_."

"Me?" Eyzn repeated, somewhat confused. I still couldn't see him, but the quarian was currently turning in circles trying to locate me, his posture growing more timid by the second. "I don't understand. None of this makes sense. All I did was administer a relaxant gas to your system. You were supposed to be unconscious for hours! You were only out for fifteen minutes!"

"Felt a hell of a lot longer than that," I grumbled to myself as I scratched my neck. I then snuck over to a bunched up grouping of pipes near the corner and found that they formed the perfect steps for me to ascend without having to use the stairways, which is where I believed Eyzn would be watching intently. "You miscalculated," I now growled out viciously as I began to climb, my arms firmly clamped around the piping as my feet carefully lifted my body up. "You screwed up the dosage, not to mention the chemicals. Remember my reaction when you described the intended effects of that gas and how I seemed to be in a state of disbelief? Yeah, that wasn't because I was worried at all at what you thought the gas would do to me. It was because I knew that the gas would temporarily give me the increased strength for me to escape, yet I was shocked that, despite your claims to the contrary, you honestly had no idea."

"You lie. There was no way you could have known that immediately."

I bit back a grunt as I hoisted myself onto the second floor, taking care to step upon the grating with my heel first to gently roll forward onto my toes. I hurried over to the next pipe grouping so that I could ascend to where Eyzn was pacing. From where I was, I could now see the quarian's faint blue enviro-suit through the thin clouds of steam, but he had not seen me yet. Eyzn was holding onto his shotgun so tightly that his hands were shaking and her periodically peered over a clear glass guardrail as he constantly searched for me.

"Why not? I've faced such cases before," I shot back, the room still warping my voice in all directions. "You said that the gas would inhibit my nicotinic acetylcholine receptors while simultaneously activating my D2 receptors in my brain. Guess what, Einstein, just because humans have analogous organs with quarians doesn't mean that a substance will produce the exact same effects!"

When Eyzn didn't immediately reply, I continued to hammer my point home as I climbed.

"Want to know what you really gave me? There is only one type of chemical that can both activate and deactivate those specified receptors in the brains of humans… and it's been made illegal for centuries. You basically gave me a reverse-engineered form of the drug _PCP_ , a substance that can produce psychosis in humans. You just deliberately made me _consume_ a drug that decreases my tolerance to pain as well as my overall aggression. You think I could tear through your cronies normally? Withstand so many blows and gunshots? No… this is not normal. This was all on you, pal."

Eyzn unleashed a frustrated scream as well as another shotgun burst. Again, he was still aiming in the wrong direction away from me.

"You're ruining everything!" he grimaced.

I nearly choked in disbelief. " _I'm_ ruining everything?!" I bellowed as I hung onto the pipe. "You're the ones who barged into my life without notice, beat me up and tried to take my wife away. Why should I be the one to blame?"

"Ah yes," Eyzn voice oozed. " _Nya_. Your wife. Well, you should take comfort in the fact that if there's anyone I could hate more than you, it's her."

"Aww, jealous are we?" I mocked as I silently leapt up to a nearby grate, my fingers burning with the effort of clinging onto it, but in my enhanced state, it was an easy feat. My voice then turned serious. "You leave her out of this, Eyzn. She's done nothing to you."

"Except expose the fact that my stepfather never reserved as much affection for me than he did for Nya? I've been with him for years and I've never seen such devotion from him before. I've been blind to the fact that the only thing Iroa's ever concerned himself with was finding little darling Nya, proving that he was never going to accept me as a real son. Already you can see that he dotes on her more than he does to me. Why _shouldn't_ I hate her for tearing _my_ family apart?"

I swung my body over the final glassy guardrail, taking care that my footfalls were ever silent. Clouds of steam billowed through the floor, hiding my body from Eyzn, who was now on the same level, but he didn't know that I had reached this point yet.

"So that gives you the right to tear up mine?"

Another blast, another ricochet. Closer this time, but still not quite upon me. I didn't flinch from this report, either.

"It was the only way to appease Iroa!" Eyzn screamed. "My last chance to win his affection by demonstrating the fact that his fantasy was exactly just that, a fantasy! Yet no matter how many times she rebuffed him, Iroa persisted! Can you not see how devastating that is for someone like me?! And you, Sam… you weren't even supposed to _be_ here! Nya shouldn't have married a human! All you've done is just complicate everything through your corruption of my sister! Now, you've broken Iroa's spirit, rendered irreparable damage to this family. I can make this right, but there's only one way to accomplish that: by killing the both of you."

Clouds of steam swelled around me, mixing with the sweat upon my skin. The fog was the final barrier between the two of us, rendering me invisible as I used the gaseous water to my advantage. I was only feet away from Eyzn – it was now or never. Taking one final breath, I slowly blinked, savoring the moment as I simultaneously tensed and grinned.

"Just try it, bitch."

Eyzn whirled as he now comprehended that I was right next to him at the same time that I lunged through the steam with a shout. The quarian swung the shotgun around to bear in my direction, but my arms intercepted the weapon and tore it out of Eyzn's hands. Eyzn backed away fearfully as I now held the shotgun, but instead of using it against him, I simply twisted it in my hands and brought the gun down upon the guardrail hard without even looking away at the quarian. The flimsily designed weapon cracked in half, the two pieces tumbling into the cavern below.

Pushing his fear downward, Eyzn whipped up the pistol he kept in his holster. I batted that away too. We did not even make time to watch the handgun clatter away as the two of us then set upon each other's throats.

Screaming wildly, in panic or anger, Eyzn flew at me with a flurry of fists as I tried to do the same in kind. A series of punches impacted me upon the chest and abdomen, but I was still so invigorated from the dissociative compound that I had inhaled that all the blows could do was knock me back a step or two. My returning punches were not quite as calculated nor as graceful, but they certainly did have the power behind them. Eyzn was quick enough that he was able to dodge a few swings until one lucky blow struck him in the shoulder, causing him to spin in pain.

"You yielded once," Eyzn spat as he clutched a hand over the afflicted area. "Like a weakling. I can make you yield again!"

The quarian stutter-stepped and laid into me a fierce punch that snapped my head a few degrees back. Unfortunately for him, with the combination of the drugs coursing through my system and the thick mask over my mouth, the blow had been softened so severely that I barely felt any pain. All I could do was blink and respond with an answering blow just in time to catch the quarian just above his solar plexus. Eyzn coughed and staggered before he turned to face me, eyes now filled with more worry than I had seen on him before.

Unseen, filled with new life, I smiled. "You might be disappointed further."

At the same time, we charged.

The next few moments were nothing less than chaos tearing at the seams of our better natures. Undulating, without control or rhythm, we pummeled each other as hard as we could with a hail of fists and elbows, shouting all the while. Tangled in a sea of blows, the pain became merely an idea as every single impact all blended together. No matter how many cuts, how many bruises would impart themselves onto me, I still managed to push forward, repaying each strike in kind upon Eyzn, more than meeting his match.

No longer was I going to stand idly by while someone whacked upon me. No longer would I simply take any more abuse. Now was the time where I had to give back, to distribute every single conceivable iota of hate and malice that was directed at me and translate that into the unstoppable force that formed my will.

No matter what, I promised myself that I would not give in.

After a brutal set of shots to our bodies, we disengaged for a brief instant to catch a badly-needed breath. Eyzn tried to sidle around a cart that carried an assortment of tools, but I was hot on his heels. I grabbed at the cart and hurled it out of the way, sending a multitude of silver metal appliances spinning and clanging away in a chrome drizzle. Eyzn lobbed a fallen wrench, but I sidestepped, easily evading the wayward tool.

"Tell me where Nya is, Eyzn," I softly ordered as the distance between us rapidly closed.

"You're insane!" was his only reply as he wound his arm back for a massive punch.

I ducked my head out of the way and delivered two blows in rapid succession to Eyzn's rib cage. One of his own fists struck me just above the sternum, his knuckles bouncing uselessly off bone. As the quarian recoiled to yowl in pain momentarily, I stepped into his stance to savagely sink a fist into Eyzn's gut.

He staggered upon the walkway and it almost looked like he would fall. But in an instant, Eyzn summoned up his second wind and launched himself at me with a final, desperate howl.

"Give up!" Eyzn screamed as he struck me on the cheek.

My head was thrown to the side, but I slowly rotated back to face the quarian, not even feeling the pain.

"Just… yield!" he yelled again as he hit me on the other cheek.

Again I stumbled, but I did not even come close to bending the knee. I sighed as my body pulsated once before I simply beheld Eyzn in front of me, nothing in my posture indicating that I was about to collapse.

Dumbly, Eyzn just stared. "How are you doing this?" he whispered. "This can't happen. I beat you once before! I've given it my all this time, so _how are you still standing?!"_

Drinking in the man's fear, I savored the moment before I uttered a chuckle in return.

"Because I have people in my life who care about me. That's all I'm ever going to need."

Eyzn stared at me in horror, his eyes widening as deep down, a nerve twinged. Driven by a force approaching lunacy, Eyzn ran at me for one last punch, determined to send all of his remaining energy into this final blow. Rage lidded him, all muscles taut. He tried to scream, but had no breath to do so.

For all of his talk, Eyzn finally miscalculated.

Quicker than he could anticipate, I moved not away from the blow but _into_ it. At the same time, I bellowed while I unleashed a punch of my own, and I was able to make the hit first while Eyzn's cleanly impacted nothing but air.

Flesh and bone in my hand met scratched metal, but metal yielded.

There was a terrific smash.

Eyzn was struck so badly that he spun completely around and toppled against the glass comprising the guardrail. Upon the right side of his mask now, four slight indentations pressed themselves into the surface – evidence of where the fingers of my fist had struck. His knees buckled and he finally started to slide over the side, but not before I fiercely grabbed him by the neck and bent him over above the glass barrier, dangling his upper torso three stories above the ground floor.

I reached over while Eyzn groaned as he hung limply to rummage around in the quarian's front pockets. I was lucky on the second try when I withdrew my father's pipe from within the depths in Eyzn's enviro-suit. Miraculously, it was undamaged – it was still shining lusciously like it had just been polished yesterday.

"I'll be taking this back," I grimaced to Eyzn as I shoved the pipe in my pocket this time. "And I won't be needing you to find my wife in any case. I can do that myself."

Eyzn raised his torso a bit, his gaze somewhat uncomprehending as he tried to glean understanding from my concealed expression alone.

"How could you do this?" he quietly lamented as his right hand began to reach for something out of sight. "How could your hate possibly be greater than mine?"

He was not expecting an answer because suddenly, Eyzn gave one ultimate lunge towards me, a knife now in his hands. I saw the move almost immediately and, with a hiss, my hand suddenly clamped on his wrist, preventing the knife from sinking into my gut. Eyzn's head shot up, thoroughly shocked as he felt my grip clamp down painfully.

" _I'm not doing this for hate!_ " I yelled in his face before I leaned back and _pushed_ , shoving Eyzn off the platform.

The glass barrier creaked and finally cracked as it could not withstand the weight of my force. It shattered around Eyzn's body, surrounding him as he fell. I stood tall as I watched Eyzn continue to drop, breath being drawn out agonizingly slow. His fingers reached out, as if he was pleading for respite, for one last chance to grasp at the edge, still unwilling to accept reality. My own arms denied him this, as they hung at my sides, content to watch him suffer.

I looked at his tumbling form with a dying sadness, torn and upset at the wanton violence. All I had wanted was to have a nice vacation with my wife, to make memories that would last for the rest of my life. All that greeted me, however, had been destruction. Eyzn was part of this wrenching force that embodied all of the strife I had faced up to this point. I gave him no sympathy. I simply ceased to despise him. I was the one out of the two of us who knew their path in life, who had managed to glean purpose out of my being here. Eyzn was still lost, and his fear had taken hold of him in the form of anger, lashing out at anyone that defied his worldview.

I could have been like him. I had been filled with anger and regret once.

I had tried to commit suicide with my car in one universe and ended up in this one, to my initial chagrin.

I had been assaulted in an alleyway for trying to do the right thing.

I had attempted suicide a second time and managed to spectacularly fail.

I had been bruised, battered, and maimed in a war I had been trying to avoid.

I had endured so much… that I very well could have turned out just like Eyzn.

Yet for all those moments of regret, anger, and depression, I had managed to discover that light at the end of the tunnel after nearly missing it for a long time. I found peace within my life, created a purpose, found someone to love and share my happiness with.

I'd like to think that I turned out right after all.

Less than a second transpired and Eyzn finally hit the floor with a thud. I glanced downward over the edge, just to make sure that he was taken care of.

But Eyzn was not dead. He had missed all of the jutting pipes and the lower gangway on his journey down, and had made it to the ground uninterrupted. He was now rolling on his back, moaning in agony, alive but immobile for the time being.

I unleashed a sigh of relief that I had not known that I had been holding. Eyzn would not be eating away at my conscience. Ever so carefully, I backed away from the edge, avoiding the jagged areas in the clear barrier that I had been responsible for.

Leaving Eyzn in a bad state, I now rushed through the door upon the opposite end of the catwalk, a little banged up but still feeling remarkably fresh. The third floor hallway of the shuttle was abandoned as far as I could see, which was a relief because I had suddenly lost all interest in instigating another brawl today. I think that the airborne medications were starting to wear off because there was a definite throb that was starting to take hold over my body, particularly in the areas where I had been either shot or punched.

Resuming my intent search for Nya, I stuck my head in every room I passed, just to check all the locations off my list. I still had not run into either Kraana or Iroa yet, which was good because I honestly did not want to interact with any more of my so-called extended family for a while. Some people have strained relations with their in-laws while my own relations pretty much had erupted into open warfare at this point. It was crazy.

After about the fifth room or so that I approached, I heard from behind the door the muffled sounds of a commotion. It actually sounded like someone was whaling on another person… or engaging in a rather lewd activity. I couldn't tell which – my hearing was shot to hell as it was. My natural curiosity overriding everything else, I approached the range for the door's motion sensors to activate and I stepped inside the area.

It took me a bit to realize just what the hell was going on.

There were two quarians inside the room – sparse, with a few unmarked boxes and a lone table – but one of them, a female wearing a familiar looking black and crimson suit, was indeed pummeling the other quarian without abandon on the table. The quarian that was being beaten up, the one I did not recognize, was not putting up much of a defense as he lay there upon the flat surface. He teetered on the brink of consciousness, his arms falling limply as the female grunted and kept on beating him to within an inch of his life.

Without a second thought, I stepped into the room and reached out to grab the female's wrist before she could land one more blow. Startled, Nya whirled around, almost like she was about to strike me, before she recognized who I was, mask and all. Warmth and relief blossomed in her eyes and her violent veneer vanished in a heartbeat.

She said not a word as she proceeded to give me a desperate hug. Her helmet mashed against my chest and her fingers tightly dug into the skin of my back. Her entire body gave a tremble as she briefly hyperventilated, but sighed several times as she fought to calm herself.

In response, I lovingly returned the hug with a satisfied sigh of my own. I rested my cheek upon the clothed top of her helmet as my arms tenderly embraced my wife, keeping her close to my battered body.

"Beautiful quarian," I murmured in relief.

Nya trembled as she finally lifted her head up to meet my eyes.

"Wonderful human," she swelled.

"Sorry I'm late," I smirked. "I got a little held up."

Nya laughed, a welcome sound. "It certainly took you long enough. I even freed myself while you were out and about."

"I can see that. Was I interrupting anything important?"

"Not terribly," Nya looked over to appraise the still-groaning guard upon the table. "I had things on my end taken care of." She then seemed to notice that I was not exactly in a good way either, seeing as some of my blood had now smeared into her suit. Worryingly, she examined my wounds and cuts, her fingers gently prodding where I had been injured. "Oh… _Keelah_ , Sam. You're… you're hurt…"

"It's not a problem right now," I honestly replied, shrugging it off.

Nya looked like she didn't believe me and rightfully so. If my male stoicism had been less instinctive maybe she would not be so concerned.

My wife uttered a frustrated sigh. "So despite the fact that you're looking in better shape than I've ever seen you before, you're completely covered in bruises, a third of your body is coated in blood, and that one of your eyes is bloodshot I shouldn't consider this to be a _problem?_ "

"I know it looks bad," I dipped my head sheepishly, "but you have to believe me when I say that I'm not in a whole lot of pain. When trying to drug me unconscious they really messed everything up. Needless to say that I'm a walking tank at the moment."

"I guess I can believe that," she conceded. "But I'm keeping an eye on you until spend a good while fixing yourself up once we get out of this mess. Deal?"

"Deal," I replied almost automatically. Here's a hint: if your spouse is concerned for your health, you'd better listen to what they have to say otherwise they're never going to make you forget it.

"How did you manage to escape anyway? And how is it that you look a whole lot more… _defined?_ "

"Ehh," I winced as I rubbed at my jaw, only for the mask to block such an action, leaving me to silently suffer. "It would be impossible to make a long story short, I'm afraid. Let's just say that they gave me a compound that induces a psychotic state in humans instead of the anesthetic effect Eyzn was hoping for. And don't get used to my improved change in physique. Chances are it will fully wear off in a couple hours."

Psychotic was putting it lightly. I had to endure several cycles of wading in the murkiest depths of my subconscious!

"Shame," Nya clucked as she briefly turned her gaze sensual while crossing her arms. "I was actually just starting to entertain the idea."

"I'm so sorry that I ruined one of your fantasies," I uttered snarkily.

"Liar," Nya correctly retorted before she reached up to tug at the mask around my mouth. "Why are you even wearing this? Are you trying to look like a bio-terrorist? Maybe taking some quarian cues?"

"You wish," I said as I similarly yanked at the mask's straps to demonstrate the difficulty in removing the apparatus. "No, I just can't get this damn thing off around my head. Eyzn must have locked it around me when he wanted me to inhale the gas that initiated my physical changes. He completely botched the entire thing though, so I would have to give partial credit to him for unwittingly helping me in my escape."

"I'm going to tear his head off for what he did to you," Nya growled as her fingers traced a particularly nasty cut on my chest.

I chuckled. "I'm way ahead of you. I just finished beating him up before coming here. I even threw him off a walkway, too."

Nya brightened at that. "Alive or dead?"

"Alive."

"What a pity," Nya sighed before she tugged at my arm. "We've dawdled enough. You got a plan to get out of here?"

"Figured that I'd make one up as we go," I flippantly replied as we headed back out into the hallway. "So far I've good luck with a little brute… oh, _fuck_."

Nya was about to ask what was the matter until she glanced at the end of the hall, towards the shuttle's bridge, to find what had struck me so. She similarly stiffened in horror too. A few section lengths away was Kraana, flanked by four other quarians, all holding assault rifles in our direction. It was not an ideal situation – we were unarmed, Kraana was too far away for us to reach as we would be torn to shreds beforehand, and we were smack-dab in the middle of a hallway which is the worst place to be if you are in someone's gunsights as there is literally nowhere else to hide in such a narrow range to sweep.

Oh yeah, we were royally fucked.

"Leaving so soon, you two?" Kraana called, her finger slowly inching towards the trigger of her gun.

"Try immediately," Nya taunted while she partially moved her body in front of mine, much like a mother protecting their young.

"Cute," Kraana sneered as she now shouldered her rifle. "But not enough, I'm afraid. I'm not looking forward to breaking the bad news to your father, but I think that we always knew it was going to end this-,"

WHAM!

Unsympathetic to the point Kraana was trying to make, one of the doors that bisected the hallway suddenly and unexpectedly slammed shut, separating our groups from one another. There was a little glass slit in the door that enabled Nya and me to look through, showing Kraana and her troopers in a state of shock as they ran forward to try to pry the door open. Apparently this wasn't what they had in mind for us.

"What the…?" I muttered as I took a step back and glanced at Nya. "Was that you?"

"Uh-uh," Nya shook her head. "Wasn't me. You sure you didn't do that?"

"Pretty positive," I affirmed as I turned this way and that, glancing all over the place to make sure that I had not accidentally elbowed a button that I shouldn't have. Regardless, however the door had come to be shut, it was a lifesaver. Kraana looked absolutely furious from the other side as she and her cronies wrenched upon the threshold to no avail.

"Then… who did?"

Just then, something crackled directly in my ear.

" _Samuel, Creator McLeod_."

"Jesus!" I jumped in surprise, nearly bonking my head on the low ceiling. " _Sagan?_ Is that really you?!"

" _Affirmative_ ," the geth's smooth voice intoned.

"I'll be damned," I muttered in awe. Next to me, Nya was also visibly focused as she definitely was picking up the geth's transmission.

"Sagan, what's going on?" Nya asked out loud. "Where are you?"

" _We have found refuge along with your companions Riena and Chandler point two kilometers away from your location_. _By accessing and bypassing the outdated security protocols_ _we have temporarily hijacked all mechanical processes on board the shuttle you are interred upon. We currently detect that you are upon the third level of the shuttle and that hostiles have covered both the stairwells and the lifts, impeding your exit_."

"So much for getting out of this in one piece," I groused.

" _Not necessarily_ ," Sagan insisted. " _We recommend accessing the door on your right. It will provide you with an alternative exit_."

Nya and I looked at the door in question, both trying to decide exactly where the geth was going with this. It was only until after the door slid aside did we get to view a very cramped and spartan room with two padded g-couches spanning the length of the area, facing each other. Interior compartments had been bolted onto the low ceiling, with labels indicating specific types of rations which included food, water, a survival shelter, medi-gel, and flares. Safety harnesses hung from the ceiling and a tiny porthole provided the only view out into Rannoch.

As far as alternative exits go, an escape pod like this technically qualifies.

"You have got to be kidding me," I blurted as I beheld the interior of the pod.

" _Geth do not ridicule, Samuel_."

"And you're sure this is the only way off?" Nya asked cautiously.

" _Yes_ ," Sagan said. " _It is the route with the least amount of risk to your survival_."

"Easy for you to say," I scoffed as I reluctantly climbed in, doubtful but fully knowing that I had no choice. "You're not the one stuffing yourself into a pod the size of a toaster. Besides, how are we to know that we're not just going to be ejected into the cliff wall at the far side of the valley?"

" _The shuttle's orientation currently has the escape pod aimed at the valley floor below, into the jungle. The pod will eject from the shuttle at 320 feet per second, which means that your trajectory will place you point-seven-five kilometers away from the nearest cliff wall. The acceleration dampeners in the pod will reduce the severity of impact as well. Survivability at this distance is equated to 98.2%"_

I seated myself down upon a g-couch and yanked down my safety harness almost angrily, a few clicks traveling up the mechanism until it slotted firmly against my frame. Opposite from me, Nya was busy doing the same. After we both had been safely secured, a holographic interfaced popped up in front of me, the activation sequence for the pod, as denoted by a large icon in the far right corner reading " _Ignition_."

"I swear that I will do anything if we get out of this in one piece," I whispered fiercely to myself before my finger slowly inched over the haptic interface. I looked to Nya, waiting to see if she had any objection.

She just nodded, silently urging me to continue. Between us, we both knew that I was going to press this button one way or another. Anything was preferable to remaining on board this shuttle with Kraana knocking at our threshold.

So I hesitated no longer.

There was an explosion of sparks from outside the porthole before the outline of the shuttle rapidly shrunk to a pebble in less than a second. The purple and orange hued sky briefly flashed into view for the next second before I finally turned my head away, feeling slightly sick.

I was about to shout out loud that these acceleration dampeners were a miracle because it certainly didn't feel like we had just accelerated to 10 Gs of gravitational force in the blink of an eye, but such a statement died in my throat as the craft shuddered and everything twisted as the third and final second of our flight came to a smashing conclusion.

" _Ejection complete_ ," I faintly heard Sagan's voice flutter in my ear.

* * *

 **A/N: As a heads up to you all, I'll be leaving for a vacation to Germany on the 26th this month, so I'm hoping to have the next chapter out before then. If not, well... just know that I haven't died nor will I give up on this story. I'm 75% done writing it at this point - I can't give up now. Most likely it's going to be the chapter after next that will take a bit longer to complete, but I wanted to post a notification in case anyone thinks that I got run over by a bus.**

 **Sam's Rampage: "The Power of Excalibur" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_. The movie itself was all right but Daniel Pemberton's score is one of the most original compositions for a big-budget blockbuster in recent years. It is texturally fierce and coarse and has an immense drive throughout the entire album. This cue is wild and unrestrained, and I could not think of a better piece of music to highlight such a violent scene.**

 **Sam Faces Eyzn - Round 2: "BT-7274" by Stephen Barton from the video game _Titanfall 2_. Stephen Barton's contributions to the Titanfall series are a cut above the stock mold for what passes as epic scores these days - I'm a fan of the warbling horns and the dramatic choir in this particular cue. I'd think that it makes a good background sound for a one on one fight.**

 **Ejection: "The Black Hand" by Tyler Bates from the video game _Killzone: Shadowfall_.**


	16. Chapter 16: Created and Creator

Just when everything had started to align in Iroa's favor, everything had upended upon itself. Yet not exactly in a method that was altogether expected, to give him credit.

To say that Iroa was unhappy was a monumental understatement. In fact, the quarian could hardly recall a time when he had been so thoroughly enraged at the current situation. He had been upset several times before this, but for more decidedly trivial reasons, and to be _this_ incensed was treading new territory for the man. It almost frightened him – he had never felt such a rage before, at least that he could recall.

Fighting to control his temper and to not scream out in frustration (thereby setting a bad example for those under his charge), Iroa clomped down the halls of the shuttle in a dark haze. He had to step over the bodies of several of his own men and women as he marched his way down to the containment rooms, noting that none of them appeared to be acknowledging him in the slightest. They were way too banged up to even give their respect to his seniority and command and for that, Iroa could forgive the temporary insubordination.

All of the young quarians involved in the altercation were alive, which was a relief, but there were a scant few that had been put in critical condition, their injuries quite severe. Many of Iroa's men were sporting concussions from blows to the head, quite a few had amassed a litany of broken bones in a variety of places, one of his men had been shot in the leg, and there were a couple quarians that had to be put in decontamination because their visors had cracked or their suits had been punctured, exposing them to any pathogens potentially lurking about. Not all of Iroa's troops had been involved in this complete debacle, but it was the very fact that a good majority of them had been put out of commission for the time being that frustrated him so.

 _And this was all done by one man?_ Iroa thought to himself. _How could Sam possibly accomplish such a thing? Where did he learn those kinds of maneuvers, that strength? I never thought he had this kind of drive in him._

Iroa could not deny the facts. He had seen the security footage of the human completely laying waste to his troops using nothing but his bare hands. The images of the bare-chested man, coated in cuts and blood while sporting a terrifying mask over his face, as he pummeled one quarian after the other, sent chills down Iroa's spine. The speed… the fury with which this man was able to dispatch his foes, it was completely unreal. Iroa had even watched the segment where Sam had gotten embroiled into an all-out fist-fight with his own stepson and was only moderately surprised when he saw that Sam had managed to get the upper hand and had thrown Eyzn off of a balcony. Eyzn was not in a good way from the ordeal, but he was still functional. Iroa knew him well enough that Eyzn's body would not be the thing that would be the most damaged today – it would be his pride.

Iroa did consider that the brat had to learn sooner or later how to be a bit more humble in the future. This would teach him an invaluable lesson, in any case.

It did not stop Iroa from wanting to candidly speak his mind about the entire affair. Punctuating his thoughts with as many curses as possible was also looking like a foregone prospect at this point.

After making his way down a staircase near the rear of the shuttle and past another gaggle of injured quarians, Iroa finally reached the room he was looking for and barged in past the guards stationed at either ends of the door before they could stop him.

Eyzn and Kraana, both seated upon a surgical table in a huddled pose, looked up at Iroa's arrival, each one of them simultaneously angered yet weary. However, their enmity could not match the sheer intensity of Iroa's own annoyance, his body verging on the edge of shaking itself to pieces as he beheld his family with an uncontrollable rage. Iroa's golden visor managed to obscure most of the fury that his eyes beheld, but it was his clenching fists that were conveying all of his sheer frustration and disappointment at the moment.

While Kraana did not look the least bit intimidated at Iroa's entrance, Eyzn was noticeably less irritable. The young quarian's visor was now sporting a series of angry indentations upon the right side, near his vocabulator – a pattern where human knuckles had sank into it from a roundhouse blow. Even in his angered stated, Iroa was secretly impressed that the human could distort the brittle metal from an attack as crude as a punch.

Kraana rose from the bench, her arms raised to prevent her husband from continuing further in the room. "Iroa," she attempted to get out hastily in order to protect her son, "this isn't his fault. I can-,"

"I don't want to hear it from you," Iroa snapped, cutting Kraana off. She tried to protest further but he wouldn't have any of it and rudely shoved his wife to the side, clearing the way. He fixated Eyzn with a glare before he took his next deep breath. "What did you _do?!_ How did this even happen?! Look at me when I'm speaking to you!"

"Husband," Kraana tried once more, trying not to let all of her annoyance out at once. "Let me-,"

" _Shut up_ ," Iroa interrupted her again through clenched teeth. "Eyzn is a grown man, he can speak for himself. Something happened back there with my daughter and her human husband, and I know that you played some part in it, Eyzn. You are going to tell me right now how this fiasco came to pass or, so help me, you will come to regret it dearly."

Eyzn glanced at his mother first before he shrugged ambivalently upon the bench. He refused to meet Iroa's eyes as he made a deliberate show of looking away in defiance. His breaths came out in pained wheezes – he was still hurting from the thrashing he had taken at Sam's hands. Iroa would have to concede that falling three stories and landing on your back was probably quite a painful injury to accumulate. It did not soften his disposition, though.

"It's interesting that you're more concerned for the welfare of Nyareth than you are for mine," Eyzn gritted out in between labored breaths as he touched the markings upon his helmet. "Your bias is showing again."

Iroa did not look amused, nor particularly concerned at this line of grandstanding. "Just answer the question."

Now Eyzn finally stared at his stepfather, luminous eyes incredulous. Iroa stood his ground as his stepson's eyes wavered somewhat horribly – Eyzn was having so much trouble trying to comprehend his defeat that he was one step away from having a full blown meltdown. Iroa was not in a very comforting mood so he continued to silently press the younger man for clarification, for the truth.

"You think I _wanted_ this to happen?!" Eyzn cried as he jerked upon the bench painfully, drawing a wince. White eyes blazed fire, searing past the boundaries. "I only did what I thought was the right thing to do! Considering Sam's predisposition for physical violence, I felt that subjugating him to our own prisoner regimen would have been considered a proactive movement on my part. So… maybe I made a little miscalculation with the chemicals I might have introduced into the human's system, seeing as that _was_ the catalyst for Sam completely turning into a rage. But let me point out that no one on this ship could possibly figure out, considering the medicinal stores in our possession, the perfect compound that had to be created in order to pacify a human! Most of our stock is crafted for quarians – _dextro_ -amino based! I had to make do with whatever I could get!"

Iroa considered Eyzn's statement before he shook his head in derision. "And what you eventually made do with, you failed, Eyzn. Endangered us all. Incompetence is no excuse for this kind of outcome. If the human would have been restrained enough with our current facilities, then you should have left him alone instead of conducting him in one of your experiments! And don't think I'm an idiot for one second! I know what you're trying to do!"

Suspiciously, the younger quarian blinked. "Please, enlighten me," Eyzn drawled.

"For one, you're trying to levy part of the blame off yourself and onto others, such as Sam, whom I know for a fact was only acting in such a deranged manner is because he was directly responding to your abuse!"

"Wait just a minute!" Eyzn growled as he tried to sit up off the bench but failed, clearly hiding most of the pain that afflicted him. "You're blaming _me_ for his actions?!"

"On multiple times you've assaulted him and just an hour ago you drugged him. I'm a pretty forgiving person but even I'd be more than a little pissed off if that had happened to me. Suffice to say that you deserved whatever beating he gave you."

Eyzn's eyes flashed for a second, momentarily caught off guard. With a snarl, the quarian started tapping away into his omni-tool's interface and rummaged around a few files before he withdrew a document and waved the slides in front of Iroa's face.

"See?" Eyzn indicated, aghast. "Do you see what that bosh'tet did to me? I'm not talking about the bruises and sprains. No, look at the X-ray right there! I've got damage all along my spine, a slipped disc, and I might even have accumulated some nerve damage. Do you understand? I might end up being partially paralyzed because some human threw me off a walkway!"

"And if you keep talking to me like a belligerent idiot I will throw you off the same walkway again," Iroa grimaced out evenly. "Bear in mind that if you weren't in such pain, I would have struck you the instant I walked in this door."

"You're really going to look me in the face and tell me that I deserved all this? Is this really what you want?"

Iroa did not hesitate for a second. "It is, because it's the truth."

The younger quarian barked out a laugh. "Then I guess we've learned where each of our loyalties lie, right?"

"Well, you're certainly not with _me_ , I'll give you that," was Iroa's simple retort, which had the effect of momentarily silencing Eyzn – an all-to rare moment where his amount of verbal ammunition had finally run dry.

That moment was all Iroa needed. While Eyzn was struggling to formulate a meek comeback, Iroa abruptly turned on his heel and exited through the door he came from. Kraana shot her son a pained look before she followed her husband, leaving Eyzn to recline in agony, now able to show his discomfort in private.

"You're not being fair to him" Kraana hissed as she shoved Iroa's shoulder.

However, Iroa whirled and clasped Kraana's wrist as she moved in for another shove, quickly stunning her with the speed he demonstrated, not to mention this change in vigor.

"We're past being fair," Iroa simply said, moroseness now creeping into his tone. "You're complicit in this with Eyzn too. The both of you forfeited fairness when I expressly told you not to lay your hands upon my daughter. You did not listen, so now I've got to make do with the mess you left me. For starters…"

Iroa raised his other wrist, his omni-tool ignited – a golden glove wreathed around his arm. A little icon flashed from green to red after a quick maneuvering of his thumb and he shot a mocking look at his wife.

"What did you just do?!" Kraana whispered fiercely, recognizing the format for a command input.

Iroa shrugged as carelessly as he could manage. "Something probably unnecessary, but I made sure to lock Eyzn's room from the outside. It's probably for the best that he's in such a debilitated state, otherwise I'd be more worried about him trying to ruin my last bastion of hope. This way, I'll have some peace of mind knowing that he won't be able to interfere for the time being."

Chuckling to himself, Iroa began to depart after releasing Kraana's wrist, leaving his fuming wife behind in his wake.

"You bastard," he heard her hiss after him. "You really do hate him, don't you?"

With a sigh, he stopped where he was, but he made a point of not turning back around to look at Kraana, the gesture meant to be insulting. "Make up all the fictions you want if that will assuage you, but in reality, I'm actually doing Eyzn a favor. By locking him in I'm helping him to recuperate instead of him barging off and potentially getting himself even more injured. And don't try to override my commands – the lock function is slaved to my authentication only and only I will decide when Eyzn can come out. He'll be able to, once I get all my affairs in order and when I'm convinced that he will no longer have the ability to sabotage my plans."

"' _Your affairs_ ,'" Kraana mocked as she tilted her head to the side as her eyes narrowed sinisterly. "Everything is all about you, isn't it? You can conveniently forget about the rest of us when it suits that alternate reality that goes on inside your head, but it doesn't change how others perceive you – how _I_ perceive you."

The two quarians now took up the middle of the hallway as they now stared at each other in a mixture of confusion and anger. Iroa's golden suit statuesque against the shadow of Kraana's black. It struck Iroa that he had failed to see this side of Kraana after all the years he had known her. The coddling of her son, the refusal to dispense her affection to anyone else, it was all so strange. In that moment, Iroa shook off the lens that had been blinding him all this time, realizing that he held no attraction for the woman across from him, that he shared little in common with her, and that of all things, he hardly recognized her for who she was anymore.

 _I didn't realize it earlier_ , Iroa thought sourly. _We never did bond out of compassion to begin with – but simply out of convenience._

Kraana's statement should have been ringing alarm bells in Iroa's head, but for some reason, he was completely indifferent at the prospect of being perceived negatively by her. Total and absolute indifference.

"You knew the goals coming here," Iroa stated carefully, with the plodding pace of someone who knew he would be irreparably altering his destiny from here on out, perhaps for the worse. "If your opinion of me has changed since we landed here, then I can't do anything about that. All I'm here for is Nyareth."

Kraana gave a derisive snort. "You deluded fool. You still believe that, even after all this, you can still get your daughter back?"

"I won't give up on her so easily."

"Yet she has easily given up on you."

"Don't test me, Kraana," Iroa warned with a waggle of his finger.

Kraana was unimpressed. "I'm merely stating the facts, based on the last explosive encounter we shared. You can't possibly think that you can open a dialogue with her even now?"

"I won't be able to by myself," Iroa hinted. "I might have to employ the remaining personnel under my command one last time, for one final chance to make everything right."

It took Kraana a second to realize what he meant. "Our soldiers? You're going to use them to force her opinion? Again?"

"I can get her back," Iroa affirmed. "I'll get her back here, but this time, I do everything right. Civilized. Lay everything bare in a discussion between ourselves – alone. I just need the troops to persuade her back to the shuttle… and then I'll have her."

Kraana's visor hid an evil grin. "It's not going to work."

Iroa truthfully held similar doubts, but he was not going to admit such things to Kraana's face. Besides, he had only now began to entertain a decisive plan that he would not deign to inform Kraana of until much later, as it would only upset her. His family may be disintegrating before his eyes, but Iroa still figured that he knew which pieces to hold onto while the others could fall away.

After all the events that Iroa had endured, he had come to the realization that familial matters could be quite a bit messier than he expected, especially dealing with his direct family. In his mind, there was always a simple solution to deal with a problem… and he had managed to amass quite a big problem in the form of both Kraana and Eyzn. They had done nothing but cause him trouble this entire time, way more trouble than it was worth to keep them around. They had provoked unstable emotions in Nyareth, forcibly assaulted her and her husband, and in doing so managed to drive away the only child he had. This was supposed to have progressed so much more easily and they were more focused on screwing things up than helping to repair them!

What does one do when a body part becomes gangrenous? Simply cut out the rot and leave the healthy bits remaining. Growths like this should not fester, Iroa reasoned. Heartless, maybe. Yet necessary altogether.

He could break the bad news to Kraana later, when it was more advantageous for him to do so. Still, he was going to hate to witness her reaction. If anything, it was going to be one of epic proportions.

In any case, Iroa had better things to fantasize about. Leaving Kraana behind, firmly out of sight, Iroa headed for the bridge of the shuttle, determined to whip up the remaining troops he had left that were mobile. One final mission and then they could all lead their lives without fear, harangued no longer.

All he needed was his daughter, and every single ounce of pain he had accumulated would have all been worth it in the end. Iroa was tired of hurting so much – what he craved most of all to end this pain, was to know the joy, and the love, of being a father.

It was a simple ask in return for suffering through all these years of agony.

* * *

"Rrrggh!" I grimaced as the sawing noises grew louder in my ear. "Careful where you're aiming that thing!"

"Separation of your protective screening will proceed at a faster pace should you continue to still your body, Samuel." Sagan's tone was calm, but the precise framing of the geth's words indicated that he was as annoyed as a geth could possibly get. Not that emotions meant much to the synthetic race, but Sagan's ability to convey such organic responses was quite eerie, to say the least.

Something screeched as the miniature laser bit into one of the straps surrounding my head and I winced.

"You think that you could hurry it up a bit?" I gritted as I clenched my eyes shut, a blistering heat beginning to sear the hairs upon my neck – not a very comfortable feeling. "I'm quite keen on this to end soon."

"For god's sake, Sam," I heard Chandler sigh behind me. "Just shut up and let Sagan do his thing, okay?"

In mere seconds, the tension in the straps that had held the inhalation mask upon my face slackened, and the gray covering quickly fell to the ground with a plop. I gasped joyously as cool air was finally allowed to surge into my lungs instead of through a nasally filter. I flexed my jaw, stretching out the previously restricted tendons, finding some resistance in the natural movements – an entirely expected discomfort. Where the mask had been sealed around my mouth, a reddish ring, itching began to crop up as a result of the intense suction.

I kicked the covering away as I stood up within the cave, stretching out my limbs victoriously. These little flashes of relief were far sweeter than words could convey, considering the accumulation of small victories. Someone tossed me one of my shirts and jackets – I caught both with a grin before I quickly began to put them on, covering my newly attained wounds.

"And not a moment too soon," I addressed the group after I finished putting on the rest of my clothes, the wide smile miraculously lingering upon my face. It's these seemingly insignificant – yet appreciated - comforts in life that remind us all how lucky we are.

Despite the severity of the landing that Nya and I had endured in the escape pod after it had rocketed away from Iroa's shuttle, an impact that should have broken bones, we had managed to walk away with only a few welts upon our collars from the safety harnesses biting into our skin, as well as a few packs containing supplies from the pod (just in case). Even though we were expecting to be deposited in a different biome than before, we were a bit surprised to discover that, instead of the dry and arid deserts we had been accustomed to during this entire trip, we now found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of a wet jungle on the valley floor. Not that this was a disappointment, but it was quite a jarring pivot in terms of our setting. If anything, this was more of a shock to Nya since she had never once before been in a forest quite this dense.

If I were to compare the rainforest to anywhere on Earth, I'd reckon that the Olympic National Park in Washington State would be a good place to start compiling the similarities. The climate itself was not as humid as befitted a regular rainforest and the trees themselves, despite being alien, definitely had a more hardy look about them – thin leaves with stringy ferns circling the base of the trunks instead of vegetation possessing broad and thickened leaves for maximum water absorption. A variety of wildlife chirped in the branches above our heads, but the animals making the noises were too fast to even perceive with the naked eye – the xeno-ornithologist community was definitely going to have their hands full in studying this planet. Apparently, since quarians were the apex predators that had lived on Rannoch, there was no danger in any of us being chosen for dinner by some fastidious animal, so that was one less thing to worry about. Even more fortunate was the fact that the ecology of Rannoch relied upon animals for pollination, there were no insects scurrying about and waiting to chomp on a bit of exposed skin. We had enough problems to deal with as it was so it was to our benefit that we could disregard Rannoch's ecology in our plans to stay alive at the moment.

Although, I had to concede that things wouldn't be as bad if we were trapped on Earth, because all of the insects on the planet had been genetically modified to avoid humans as a source of food and that all the humans had killed off every major predator (and prey) species on the planet, thanks to a global warming mishap in the 2080s. There were no "real" animals on Earth anymore – they were all genetically cloned from each other and then put into a wildlife preserve for tourists to visit. So, even if we were to be deposited into the middle of the Florida Everglades, we would not face any more problems than we currently had on our plate at this time.

But every aspect of Rannoch looked a hell of a lot better than Florida, so it had _that_ going for it.

Since Sagan had been tracking our progress the entire time we had been aboard the shuttle thanks to his intuitive hacking abilities, the geth had been able to locate us within minutes with Chandler and Rie in tow, saving us the trouble of tromping around the jungle and trying to locate a landmark of some sort. Obviously, Sagan had managed to evade the patrols pursuing him since our capture (probably not a hard effort, considering the experience of the people giving chase), and afterwards the geth had taken good care to find Chandler and Rie, who had previously gotten separated during the initial chaos in the apartment complex, and continued the process of rejoining the entire group back together once more. Knowing that Nya and I were trapped within the shuttle, Sagan had patiently hacked into the ship's outdated electrical systems to help aid and abet in our ultimate escape. Sagan and company had also taken the initiative to hustle to the valley floor in an effort to create as much distance between us and Iroa's cadre as possible.

God bless the unflappable mind of a synthetic, would be all that I would have to say about that.

Once we were all reunited in our multi-ethnic group, Sagan had done well to guide us to yet another cave system about a mile through the twists and turns of the jungle maze, right at the base of the cliff at the far side of the valley. Once we were safely huddled into a dark and cool corner, light groping in from outside while the darkness simultaneously beckoned, Sagan went to work at removing the damned mask from my face while I sat on a rock.

Oh man, I was so happy to be free of that stupid thing. There was probably a red mark around my face from where the mask had been digging into my cheeks. Cosmetic annoyances aside, I was certainly thankful that my predicament had, at the very least, improved.

Chandler looked over at Nya and I expectedly, his eyebrow raised in thought. "So… do I even want to know what happened back there?"

Nya and I glanced at each other, both hesitating to answer.

"You probably wouldn't even believe me if I told you," I breathily answered, trying not to pull a face.

Chandler nodded sagely, understanding. "That bad, huh?"

"Terrible," Nya drawled as she flexed her legs one after the other.

Knowing that he would not be able to pry any more out of us, Chandler just let the matter slide. Good for us all, I suppose, because it would be a tough sell trying to describe the events that occurred on board the shuttle in an exact manner. Honestly, if I hadn't lived it, I probably wouldn't believe it either.

My body had begun winding down from the effects of Eyzn's drugs about fifteen minutes ago. My muscles had thankfully loosened and my adrenaline levels had started to lower, although this did have the unfortunate cost of me losing my previously defined physique. The veins in my body had gradually sunk back down, the subcutaneous layer of fat smoothing everything out as the endorphins in my system ceased to flow. Oh well, one can't have everything in life.

I guess that could be a top life tip: if you want to get a glimpse of your true muscular potential, take a hit of PCP.

I'm kidding. Don't actually try that. You'll be better off without your life in shambles – I should be thankful that the person administering my dosage was an incompetent.

Actually, I was happy that these side effects had a quick life to them. Unlike the worst of what pharmaceuticals had to offer, I was only going through minor symptoms of withdrawal probably because of the additional detox drugs that Eyzn had implanted into his compound, otherwise I'd be a shaking, sweating mess. Occasionally, I could feel a few muscle groups go into micro-spasms – a reaction from their loss of the dissociative drugs. The pain that sporadically knocked on my door was more akin to sharp pinches, each one serving as an uncomfortable reminder that I was not out of the woods yet. I would not be able to draw on such strength and fury again, but after what happened, I'm not all torn up about the prospect because I really did not enjoy my time as the living embodiment of a Tasmanian devil. It was good for what I had been aiming to accomplish, but completely disorienting and not at all fun.

"So what now?" Rie threw up her hands in exasperation, echoing what everyone was undoubtedly thinking. "We're all back together, but how are we going to make it to our ship? It's on the opposite side of the canyon from where we are and I don't think that your dad is going to let us go that easily, Nya."

"She's right," I agreed. "Iroa's not going to consider defeat at this stage, not when he's gotten so close. He's not the type to quit after tasting victory. My best guess is that he'll be sending everyone after us in his employ and, rest assured, they're not going to ask nicely for us to cooperate."

"This is a probable assumption," Sagan chimed in as he stepped forward, the darkness of the cavern making his armor appear more orange than yellow. "Creator Kannos has routinely demonstrated an unwavering drive in the face of uncertain odds. This setback will most likely not discourage him from calling off any pursuit."

Chandler shook his head tiredly as he rubbed at his shorn hair. "And what does that mean for us? Are we supposed to keep running from him and maybe sneak back to our ship when they're not looking?"

"No," Nya said as she now stood. The new vigor in her eyes was unmistakable and uplifting – hope sparking brightly as a slight grin graced her features unseen. "Evasion won't work. We can't just rely on luck to help us make it through. Iroa's not going to stop, so what we should do is the last thing that he's going to expect."

"And that is?" Chandler asked, his expression tired.

"It's simple. We don't need to run from him anymore. We will be swarmed by my father's forces at some point, but if we defy him, make a stand, we could break open a window of escape. We _face him_ and force him to back down!"

"You… want us to fight?" Rie gaped, her mandibles twitching once in shock. "Nya… we're not _soldiers_. I mean, only you and Chandler have had any combat training. Sam and I… we've only ever been civilians our entire lives."

"That's… not entirely true," I muttered as I worryingly paced around the cave's interior, dread starting to fill me but finding little else in the way of alternative options. "I did get some experience after being shacked up in a militia during the war. It wasn't much, but it was something. So don't expect me to be the next Savior of the Galaxy, but I think I can hold my own."

Nya walked up to me and elbowed me hard in the ribs. "Hold your own?" she whispered out of earshot to everyone except me. "Do you even remember what you did back in the shuttle? You were _amazing!_ "

With praise like that, I was thankful that my blush was hard to perceive in the dim light of the cave.

"I was trying to be modest and keep everyone's expectations tempered," I quietly admitted. "I doubt I'll ever get to that point again unless I get so angry that I won't be able to control myself. Considering what happened, I'd rather not go through that again."

"I see your point."

Not keen for her point to be set aside, even temporarily, Rie stepped into the middle of the makeshift circle we had formed, looking very concerned at the fact that we seemed to be taking this grave situation rather lightly.

"Okay, fine. So I'm the only one who hasn't been in a straight-up fight, but what difference can the five of us make against the dozens of soldiers opposing us?"

Rie had a point and it was one I was trying to thoughtfully consider before making an uninformed response when Sagan quickly chimed in.

"This underground location houses another Creator structure that can amply provide shelter. There are only two routes that lead into the interior from the valley floor, but the central chamber is fortifiable for our needs. It will suffice as an ample defense point."

"So if we're in one of the two access tunnels already," I spoke to the geth, "what if we blockade the other route? Cut off any chance of being flanked and give the quarians a singular bottleneck from which to push through."

"A plausible analysis. In order to accomplish such an objective, demolition charges should be strategically placed along the ceiling of the hollow and detonated. Theoretically, this should create an insurmountable barrier of fractured rock that will be impossible to bypass without heavy equipment. Recommend that we utilize the demolition charges provided in the escape pod for such a purpose."

"Way ahead of you," I proudly grinned as I hefted the pack from my shoulders that I had been carrying for the past hour. "Swiped some of the emergency supplies in the cargo racks before leaving. It's got a few charges in there."

Chandler clapped his hands. "Give it here."

I tossed him the pack and he caught it in a one-handed flourish.

"You're taking care of it?" I affirmed.

"Oh, absolutely," Chandler grinned. "Who are you kidding? I'm a guy, Sam. I'm not missing the opportunity to blow shit up because it's always so much fun."

"And here I thought you were volunteering out of the kindness of your heart."

Abruptly, Rie stepped backward from all of us in horror, frantically shaking her head and waving her arms in rejection.

"I c-can't…" she stumbled as she hesitantly began to walk further in the cave, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. "I just can't do this, you guys. I can't…"

Dumbfounded, we all watched her leave, each of us trying to wrap our heads about what was distressing Rie so much. Without saying a word to anyone, I quickly headed after her, throwing out a hand behind me as if to say that I had this handled. It was difficult trying to keep up with the tall turian (her long stride combined with her fast pace weren't helping matters much) and I had to pretty much jog in order to catch up to her, albeit barely.

"Hey, come on, Rie," I soothed as I gently grabbed her wrist in the middle of the next chamber. "What's going on with you?"

She whirled and with the light of the setting sun blazing in from the wide window the rock cavern afforded, the fear in her face was clearly obvious. I only needed to see her wide eyes to realize that she was deathly afraid.

"I can't help you, Sam," Rie said in a hushed voice. "This… this is something that I'm not cut out for. I'm a liability, a novice at this sort of thing."

I took a breath and sagely nodded my head in agreement. "I totally understand, Rie. I know how you must feel right now."

The turian barked a shaky laugh. "I'm not so sure that you do, Sam."

"Of course I do. I've been in your position before – I know exactly the kind of fear that's going through you. And I will freely admit that you're so much stronger of a person than I was when I faced the choice to fight."

"That was different. You barely even had a choice during the last war: fight or be killed. This isn't the same thing! This is just one man trying to find his daughter – my friend! Why can't we just try to sneak past them or peacefully surrender instead of trying to fight them? Why can't we be the civilized ones here?"

Grimly, I yanked my shirt up, exposing the litany of healing cuts and bruises that were fading after generously applying medi-gel to them. Rie's eyes grew larger as she noted every single laceration and discolored area that painted my torso, now starting to comprehend what awaited her.

"Because _this_ is what happened when we tried the civilized route," I said flatly. "While you managed to escape, Nya and I _did_ surrender, thinking that we would be treated respectfully, but all that bought me was a set of broken bones and what felt like an eternity of pain. Bear in mind that this was after we had given ourselves up without violence at first. I was restrained, drugged, sedated, and I chose to escape and fight my way out rather than endure that kind of treatment any more. I want you to come along with us, Rie, because I don't want you to go through this kind of violence as it's not something that any of us deserve. It is literally your best option right now."

Now Rie really looked lost as I shunted the hem of my shirt back down. She thought she had a good idea in the beginning but only now was she beginning to comprehend the sort of insanity that served to push against us every step of the way.

"B-But…" she whimpered. "I'm not _you_ , Sam. I'm not like you, or Chandler, or Nya. I can't fight this battle with you!"

"No one's asking you to fight this battle, Rie." I soothed as I gently placed a hand upon her arm, a friendly and welcome gesture to show that I was not joking around with her. "I'm not going to shove a gun in your hands and tell you to shoot anyone. Please believe me when I say that I would _never_ ask that of you. All that I – we – are asking of you is your assistance. Your expertise."

Rie didn't look like she understood. "What expertise could you possibly be talking about? How… how could I possibly be useful _here?_ "

"Well, I was thinking that Chandler could definitely use some help wiring the explosives around the other exit of the cave, for starters. That's definitely a job that needs to be done quickly and two pairs of hands will definitely be better than one. But I don't think that fighting suits your style anyway. You can be way more invaluable to us in another way."

"How?" Rie's eyes glistened as she looked down upon me in curiosity.

"Not to sound cocky, but I'm not too worried about us making it out of here all right. The people after us, they're a nuisance, but I don't wish to see any of them die for one man's greed. I think that, when the quarians encroach upon this place, we're going to give them everything we've got… and they'll be the ones who are overwhelmed. But in order for them to not die in this place, we need someone watching everyone's back. We're going to need a guardian angel. We're going to need a doctor."

To emphasize my point, I slung the last pack off my back and held it out by the strap for Rie to take. The turian stared blankly at the offering, only realizing in a few seconds that a red emblazoned cross had been sewn onto the front of the pack. Yet another souvenir from the escape pod that I had managed to pilfer – and perhaps the most important one of all.

Slowly, Rie's three fingered talon of a hand gently grasped the pack, her long, dry fingers briefly brushing mine. Comprehending more and more, she opened the medical backpack just to get an accounting as to what it held for her. Bandages of all sizes, tubes of medi-gel, rolls of gauze, a set of syringes, tweezers, painkillers, antihistamines, and all sorts of other types of medicines in pill form. Rie zipped the pack back up as she tried to speak.

"But where will you be if I'm patching up people?"

"Out there on the ground," I indicated as I patted my hip, indicating a pistol that I had recently liberated for myself. "I'll have no time to patch up anyone's suit while I'm battling them. That will be up to you. You'll do fine. I know it."

"Sam… you've been training me. _You're_ a better doctor than I am!"

I momentarily dipped my head in an ' _aw, shucks'_ manner, faintly embarrassed by the praise.

"If no one's going to ward off Iroa and his thugs, then I guess it's up to me, Rie. I know what I have to do – I've accepted it."

"How can you be so calm?" Rie gaped, astonished.

My gaze wisped to the outside forlornly. The vivid hues of green and yellow seeping in from the jungle washed over my vision, creating a sunny band that served to warm me all over.

"It won't be the first fight I've been in before," I muttered somewhat with regret.

"Aren't you scared?"

I turned back to Rie and definitively nodded. "Of course I'm scared. I'm always terrified of fighting. If there were another way out of this that didn't need to resort to violence, then I would take it gladly. But now, I don't know of another way. I have to do this, Rie, otherwise we're all going to get hurt."

"Is this how you felt during the war? Is being this frightened normal?"

There was an ulterior motive to these questions, I realized. Rie's regret at never obtaining a chance to defend her people during the Reaper War never failed to tear into her during every moment of doubt. With a looming conflict on the horizon, her fears were being displayed in full force here. She had missed out on her chance to prove to the galaxy that she was a good turian through her service, but with her inexperience, everything was starting to fall apart. In a perfect universe, such a sweet woman as Rie should never have to think of themselves as a failure simply because they missed out on a war.

I quickly closed the gap between us and very carefully took Rie's hands in my own. Her skin was rough to the touch, her metallic carapace glistening in the low light. I warmly smiled at her and Rie twitched her mandibles once in a sort of shaky relief.

"Take it from me, Rie, that I know all of the doubts that are running through your head. This… all of this… is completely normal. I've been so scared on the few battlefields I've been to that I've completely frozen up at the worst possible moments. I _was_ a liability because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can't even count the number of times that I've nearly died because I was too scared to act when it counted. But… near the end, I managed to find something, the key to eradicating my fear, even when you're faced with death."

"W-What?" Rie whispered, nearing the verge.

I then encased Rie's right hand with both of mine, gripping the limb firmly yet comfortably, letting my natural warmth radiate into the turian's palm. Her alien hand felt so radically different than any other species that I've previously touched. Unlike the calloused palm of a human, or the soft and pliant caress of a quarian's hand, the roughened metallic plates of the turians were not very comforting – yet it was the delicate manner at how Rie held herself that enabled me to see the gentleness underneath the forbidding carapace.

"I thought of the people that I care about the most. That's where I got my strength. When I was younger, I was an angrier, foolish man. I deliberately distanced myself from people, fearful of loss. Yet that never brought me peace – it only helped sink myself further and further into depression. But when I met someone who truly cared about me – loved me – everything changed for me. I could no longer let myself be so selfish, when I knew that there were people out there who depended on me. That's why I'm no longer afraid, Rie. I know that I cannot let the people that I love be hurt – you, Chandler, Nya – I cannot let you down! That's why I know that we're going to win today, because there are more people that need me now than ever. And I need all of _you_ now… more than ever."

For the first time ever, a hint of mischievousness flashed briefly across Rie's eyes. Her chest aflutter, she pondered but for a moment before deciding the hell with it and pulled me into a gigantic and angular (and undoubtedly turian) hug. I myself smiled as I could feel the relief radiate from Rie as obviously as my own body heat. Standing silhouetted against the afternoon sun, our shadows towering within the cave, I noted that whatever remnants of fear had been lurking within me, they too had vanished like a morning mist, burned away at the first sight of light.

"So," I said as I looked up at the now-purposeful Rie, "you ready to give these guys hell?"

Rie's mandibles bared, revealing rows of sharp and pointed teeth.

"Damn right," she growled.

* * *

A couple hours later

"It ain't the Ritz Carlton, but it'll do."

My comment was perhaps a bit too harsh. After all, this facility had been abandoned for centuries, yet because of the elaborate metallic construction that created the hive-like mapping within the cave in addition to the environmentally sealed doors stopping the elements from contributing to the urban decay, the place still looked like it had only sat idle for a few months at the minimum.

The room that we were situated in was wide – much more expansive than what I had seen on both quarian ships and the apartment complex on the other side of the valley. There was only a singular desk occupying the dusty room, but considering the amount of space afforded, this might have been a shared quarters for quarian workers. That was my best guess, as there were no baubles or other sort of askew documentation detailing exactly what went on in this place. Sagan was actually being rather tight-lipped on this particular facility's true purpose whenever I inquired. It made me consider if the geth was keeping something from us.

That certainly could be the case. After I had finished talking with Rie, she had quickly departed with Chandler to overlay the explosives near the second entrance in preparation for the upcoming assault, noticeably more confident than before. Big dramatic speeches weren't my thing, but I did have to concede that I had a knack for insightful, personal conversations. Probably because I always tried to find the root of a problem so that it could be addressed as soon as possible, leading to less awkwardness. Who's to say?

Sagan, meanwhile, led Nya and me into the structure that the rock walls initially concealed, taking us through a gigantic and cavernous space, pitch black from the lack of lighting. Our flashlights from our omni-tools and Sagan's optics were the only things providing illumination in such an enormous area. We swept our beams across skinny and limber robotic limbs, dusty pulleys and treadmills, bits of spare parts scattered across walkways, and series after series of humongous pieces of machinery, their functions completely lost on me.

Without any light to send the darkness scurrying, we could only put together a few pieces of the puzzle as we realized, after traversing through the facility a bit more, that this looked to be like some kind of production line. For what, I had no idea. There was nothing at all that indicated what this place was for – no sign of the finished products to be found. All I could glean was that this had been the site of some heavy manufacturing operation and that it looked pretty creepy without any lights on inside here. If it weren't for Sagan to lead us around, we'd have gotten lost in no time flat, so the geth had clearly frequented this establishment before. That much I could decipher.

We had then ascended a staircase that led to the large room we now found ourselves in, positioned above the factory. The roof of the accommodation was at a slight angle, the floor was comprised of the same bronze-ish metal, but the installed window did provide one hell of a view of the below jungle, allowing the light of the waning sun to be thrown inside, seemingly setting the place ablaze. Sagan had then left us alone to rest while he went off to accomplish a few duties unbeknownst to either of us. We didn't probe and he didn't elaborate.

After the hectic events of the past few hours, I could not deny that I needed a break of sorts. By the window, there was a ledge that indented outwards a bit, providing the perfect nook for me to fit my body into. This way I could be pressed up against the transparent material while having a nice and snug place to rest for however long I had. Besides, the light let in by the window was nice and warm – this room was a little too chilly for my taste anyway.

I tried my damnedest to get some sleep, but I guess I was still too hopped up on adrenaline to even begin to relax. The combination of the previous mental torture plus the knowledge that I would have to throw myself back into the fray soon was not exactly the best combination of things to dwell on, especially when you're trying to take a nap. After a few minutes, I had to concede defeat and simply settle for taking things easy and maybe drifting off into a twilight state of mind.

If only the little clicking noises from the desk could cease, then I'd be in business.

Annoyed, I cracked an eye open. Nya was at the desk, racking the slide back and forth on her pistol for what had to be the thousandth time. A cleaning regimen, I had to guess. She was just making sure that everything in her arsenal was shipshape, which was perfectly a fine thing to do, except that she was so nervous that she was redoing all of the work she had previously accomplished every five minutes. I get that some people like to work with their hands to stave off negative feelings, but this was just bordering on ridiculousness.

"I don't think anything's been lodged in the barrel since the last time you looked at it," I gave a gentle smirk as I closed my eyes again.

Dreamily, Nya blinked and stared down at her weapon on the table that was currently in the process of being disassembled (again). It was like she had only woken up from autopilot, now fully aware of the insanity loop that she had found herself in.

I scooted to the side to make room on the ledge. I then patted the new empty spot next to me.

"I think you need some rest as well, Nya. Come here and sit with me."

Wordlessly, she obliged. I think that she was actually pretty grateful to be spared the distraction of tinkering with her gun. Also, now we finally could share a quiet moment together. Times like these were becoming rarer as of late. A family squabble will definitely do that.

Nya sidled next to me so that our bodies were touching. Not entirely satisfied with her orientation, she rolled onto her side, placed one hand upon my chest, and rested her helmeted head onto my shoulder, her glowing eyes staring wondrously up at me.

Regretfully, I let out a sigh as I reached over and trailed a finger down the side of Nya's helmet. With a sympathetic smile, I breathed in a little more thoughtfully with my wife now clinging onto me.

"I'm sorry that this vacation didn't go as planned," I said as apologetically as I could.

Nya was unfazed. "I'm sorry that my family turned out to be so insane," she countered.

"I think that we're going to have to make a second trip, considering that this one is pretty much now a wasted opportunity."

"If you can guarantee that we will not be interrupted then," Nya said longingly, "then I think I can be amenable to such a thing." The hand upon my chest then furiously balled into a fist in a sudden burst of frustration. "Damn my father for doing this to us! This was supposed to be our moment! I wanted you to have a nice trip while you healed from your injuries. I didn't want to be caught in the middle of this altercation – and I certainly would have rather not known that my father was still alive. Dredging up a lifetime's worth of regret, for what?"

"Nya-,"

"That _bosh'tet_ ruined my life. He ruined this vacation. I would rather forget this ever happened so that-,"

"Nya, Nya, Nya," I soothed as I pulled her body in closer so that I could embrace her as we lay here. "You don't need to convince _me_ , let me tell you. Besides, are we really going to continue arguing over who this trip was really for when I deliberately set this in motion with you in mind?"

Nya's eyes glinted mischievously as she was temporarily distracted from her ranting. "We're not. You may have enabled us to set foot here, but I'm never going to accept such attention with these stakes. We both know that you're never going to win this argument, so I'd quit while you still can, if I were you."

"So that's the way it's going to be?" I bumped my eyebrows.

Nya leaned in so that her visor was a hair's width away from my nose, her previous indignation forgotten, replaced only by a playful arousal.

"That's how it will _always_ be."

Her fingers were now tiptoeing around my collarbone while my own hand was now carefully caressing the side of Nya's head. She elicited a soft murmur indicating pleasure and her eyes fluttered briefly.

"You nervous?" I asked her after about a minute.

Her movements stilled and she looked up at the ceiling momentarily. "Everyone's nervous. We know what's about to come, what kind of danger we're about to face. The only one here who _isn't_ nervous is Sagan, and that's because he's a geth. Rie… well, she was in a bad way, until you talked to her. You think she's holding up all right?"

"I think she's going to manage," I honestly replied. "I'd be lying if I said that she was completely fine, but I believe that she's going to cope well at the end of all this."

"I hope so. I feel so bad that we put her in this position." Nya then looked at me rather worryingly. "But are _you_ doing okay? I… Sagan did inform me of some irregularities with your health and I was just wondering if you were fine."

My brow scrunched in confusion. "What sort of irregularities?"

"It… _he_ was noticing signs that you could be severely stressed out or depressed. Nothing that needed physical attention but… it did concern me when I heard it."

"Huh," I simply uttered, intrigued. "Sagan's definitely got a keen eye, I have to give him that. Ah, I can definitely say that I've been in better spirits before, Nya. I'm not going to pretend that I'm all right – you deserve better than such blatant lies. Things have been… well, they certainly _have_ been stressful on my end. I guess that Sagan is correct when he says that I'm more stressed out and maybe more depressed than normal, but I'd wager that those kinds of things should fade away the longer after we put this event behind us. I just need to make it through this, and with you next to me I know I'm going to be fine."

Nya gave a quiet titter as she looked up at me admiringly, her head now resting upon my chest. "You've always remained rational in the craziest moments, even when you think you don't. I hope you realize that I will always be proud of you, you know that?"

"I do," I murmured at once, wryly grinning. "I am so proud of you too, Nya. I just am so ready to be done with this so that we can go home. Out of all the things I thought I would have to face someday, crazy alien in-laws was nowhere near the top of my list."

That managed a pitiful laugh out of Nya and she lightly shoved my chest in response.

"Once we get off this planet, we can take comfort in the fact that we will never see those idiots ever again," she sighed.

"No regrets about leaving your family behind?" I semi-teased.

Nya fiercely shook her head. Clean and definitive. "No. They aren't my family. Iroa, Eyzn, Kraana, they're nothing to me. Just strangers and thugs. As far as I'm concerned, I don't consider myself to be related to them in any way. I've seen nothing that could ever convince me of that fact. They will _never_ be part of my family." She then cupped my face in her hands lovingly, her eyes bright and sincere behind a smoky red haze. " _You're_ the only family I need, Sam."

Touched beyond belief, I lifted my own hands and returned the physical gesture, two of my fingers making a sensual trail down Nya's neck. She could not control the shudder that she emitted and she wriggled atop me, fueled by the ecstasy the wonderful contact imparted.

"No one's opinion has ever mattered more," I affirmed as I leaned in to kiss the top of Nya's helmet.

In an instant, Nya stilled completely. She darted her gaze back and forth, a tic that I recognized as when she was trying to come up with a quick decision. A second later, Nya was suddenly sitting atop me, her legs straddling my body while her hands splayed out across my chest, propping up her torso. Nya began to emit erotic pants, driven by emotions buried for longer than intended. I continued to lay in my current position, a bit perplexed, but no doubt enjoying the intimacy of the moment and watching my wife behold me with nothing less than pure lust.

But when her hands started to move over the clasps of her mask, my blood pressure abruptly spiked and I quickly sat up in alarm.

"Are you crazy?!" I admonished as I yanked her hands away. "Nya, I shouldn't have to remind you why removing your visor is a bad idea. Especially in this place."

Nya dipped her head downward in faint embarrassment. "I… I can't bear it any longer," she admitted sadly, her eyes lidding up at me. Her voice was husky, ragged, as though she was ashamed to be having these intense feelings even though they were completely natural. "It's been too long. Far too long. Days on end without me looking upon you and there being nothing in the way. No stupid helmet. No stupid suit. Just me and you."

"I appreciate the sentiment Nya, and I so dearly want to look at your face soon, but this is most definitely not a clean environment. I mean… Jesus, if you exposed yourself here, you are going to get so goddamn sick! This is such an unnecessary risk – you don't need to do this for me."

"Not completely unnecessary," Nya's hinted softly, almost with a tiny simper at the end.

"What do you mean?"

Now Nya chuckled a bit louder as she began to slyly look up at the ceiling, the tips of her fingers tapping against each other, indicating that she was holding back on something.

"I… may have been sporadically allowing my suit's filters to open up and allow me to breathe the Rannoch air ever since we arrived – assisted with tons of immuno-boosters, of course. You know, since this is our homeworld after all I thought that I might want to start prepping my immune system… just in case I could… you know…"

"You're kidding," I said blankly, confused as to whether I should be relieved or mad at the woman. "You mean to tell me that you've been risking your health ever since we set foot here and you're just mentioning this to me now? Nya, why would you keep the fact that you've been endangering yourself for-," I then broke off as my train of thought derailed and was replaced by a new one since chastising Nya was certainly not going to be helping anyone right now. "So… you've been fine this whole time? You're not sick? What kind of reaction has your body made to this?"

Nya's wrists were allowed to slip from my fingers as she raised them back up to her face – very much apparent that she was grinning at me.

"Hardly any reaction whatsoever."

Now free to act as she pleased, it took Nya barely any time at all for her to depress the clasps of her mask, allowing it to be pried off of her helmet. The mask itself dropped from her hands seconds later onto the ledge next to us, to be discarded and forgotten for the time being. With that done, we simply remained in our positions for a little while longer, each drinking in the sight of our own happiness now that the barriers between us had been torn down at the moment.

I was never going to get used to this, and I sincerely hoped that I never would. I knew every singular detail of Nya's face from memory, but to see it in person… words could not describe just how much better it was to witness than simply imagining it. For some reason, I never failed to be somewhat star struck every time that I mentally noted the similarities in facial structures between humans and quarians. We were so alike yet so different simultaneously. Familiar yet alien. Unusual yet beautiful.

Truthfully, there was so little that made us distinct from each other. We very well could simply be the product of tiny variations in a genetic code template – one levo race versus another dextro race. Separated only by distance across the stars… and a weak immune system.

It seemed like we were both waiting for the other to say something, be it a loving comment, a cheesy quip, or just anything, really. Maybe we both were just taking our time, simply enjoying watching the other. After a long span of silence passed with nothing occurring did we realize at the same time that talking was just unnecessary and we soon leaned forward at the same time, uniting our lips in a passionate kiss.

You know, I'd be willing to withstand many more beatings if it guaranteed moments like these. I've learned not to take opportunities like this for granted anymore. When your own wife has to literally quarantine herself in order to be with you, these private, personal moments rise significantly in importance. You appreciate the risks they take, the naked love they demonstrate. This way, they get to prove to you time and again just how much you matter to them.

I've been to hell and back to attain this feeling. I have no intention of letting go any time soon.

Nya soon lay on top of me as we continued to kiss in our lust. Our eyes were both closed as I held her there, solely concentrating on the soft sensation of Nya's lips on mine. Blindly, my fingers reached out and tenderly brushed her cheek – her own hands did the same to me as they ran through the scruffy and coarse hair of my beard.

My arms encircled my wife's lithe body, holding her ever closer. Spurred by desire, I moved my mouth to kiss her cheek and then her forehead, hearing her softly moan in my ear the entire time. This was nothing short of perfect for me. I loved it when I could touch Nya's offered skin, to be able to provide the sort of comfort kept hidden from her for years. As I rubbed at the quarian's back, I heard Nya emit a soft cry just before she moved down to kiss my neck, barely able to restrain herself from proceeding further downward.

Our legs both slid across the ledge, trying to find purchase as we scooted lower and lower until we were both lying completely flat. Our hands, if they were not touching each other's faces, fumbled until we could grasp our appendages together. The disparately numbered palms met and clenched upon one another, growing tighter and tighter as we fell deeper and deeper into our drunken bliss.

For as much as we were enjoying this, we were still cognizant enough to realize that this was going to be as far as we would have to go right now. For Nya, being exposed to this air for longer than advisable would only compound on her weak immune system the longer she failed to wear her mask. My germs were a nonissue – she had been exposed to me so many times over the years that I virtually posed zero risk to her immune system anymore. Aside from the chance of catching a stray pathogen though, this was not exactly the most private of areas. We could definitely make up for lost time eventually, but I couldn't complain at this sort of teaser when I had not been expecting anything to begin with right now.

Our soft kisses slowly quelled after many wonderful minutes and we settled for gentle caresses, silly grins spreading across our faces. My blue-gray eyes connected with Nya's glowing white ones, unable to tear our gazes apart. My pink hand came to her gray cheek once more and Nya gladly leaned into my palm, soaking up every affordable inch of contact, wishing to feel all the warmth and tenderness that I could provide. Her eyelids drooped and her mouth opened a crack, revealing a glint of her white teeth, her expression one of complete ecstasy and relaxation.

Quarians were more like humans than people thought – more than we collectively gave them credit. The unfortunate ones who would never learn this fact had to be pitied, knowing they could never see how much joy they could possibly bring to another person.

Very soon, we were laying side by side, our fingers playing with the other, still smiling all the while. We had not spoken a word since Nya had removed her visor, nor did we need to. Even without speaking, we had already said enough.

I had to wonder what the odds were that Nya and I could end up like this. It had to be some insanely small percentage for us to lead the lives we lived. A human and a quarian, two species originating from the complete opposite ends of the galaxy, meeting only in the most fortuitous of circumstances, and finally falling in love with the other had to be an outcome that was nearly impossible to replicate, but it was a concept so saccharine and sweet that I could not think of such a result as anything less than wonderful. Well, no matter how unlikely our lives ended up, I was eternally grateful for the path that I'd chosen. No matter how foreign my life had turned out to be thanks to a series of bizarre events, I had managed to pinpoint the normalcy after digging through the insanity.

And there had been a lot of insanity.

As we gently moved forward for yet another soft kiss, I had to wonder if there was anything that could possibly make this moment be any better. And wouldn't you know it, it struck me that, _yes_ … yes it certainly could be better! I still had yet to inform Nya of the revelation I had uncovered within myself while I had been lying unconscious on board the shuttle. The moment that had wiped out my last vestiges of selfishness, of indecision. My final answer to the posed quandary. A choice I knew would dredge up joy in my wife, to immediately shift our gears into the next phase of our life together.

I so longed to see her face when I could tell her what I had decided to do. I wanted to witness every moment as she could express every conceivable facet that happiness entailed upon her features.

But my reputation for possessing the worst timing would precede me before I could even conjure a sentence in my head with the clomping of feet up the staircase outside the room.

Company.

Fuck, just when I needed this privacy the most, too.

Nya and I jolted upright, startled at the fact that we were not about to be alone for very long. Nya bit her lip in anguish and looked at me with a forlorn regretfulness, her limpid eyes practically wishing that we had more time together. I bet that my own gaze was reflecting the same sentiment.

"Sagan," Nya whispered sadly before she reached for her discarded visor, recognizing the heavy footfalls. Before I could say a final word to her, the mask clicked back onto her helmet, sealing her away from me once more. Her stare seemed sadder than ever, but only because she had wanted to be with me like this for quite a lot longer.

If anything, I just wanted Nya to be happy. That was really all that mattered to me.

"Thank you for that," I whispered to her as my hand brushed the firm metal side of her helmet.

Nya stared at me desirously. "I really needed that."

"I could tell," I chortled, drawing a momentary look of ire from my wife before she rolled her eyes after being unable to conjure an appropriate comeback.

And with that, we hugged for what might be the last time. It lasted way too short. Barely any time had passed, it seemed, before we quickly broke apart at the same time Sagan strode into the room, as if we were embarrassed to be showing any affection in front of a geth. Not that Sagan would care a lick, but it was simply a reaction on our end that we would have to adjust over time.

"Creator McLeod, Samuel," Sagan intoned as he stopped in front of the doorway.

"Sagan, is everything all right?" I asked as Nya and I stood. We brushed ourselves off and smoothed at our clothes, trying to un-rumple them as best we could and hide most of the evidence indicating what kind of acts we had been previously engaged in.

The geth's minor optics rotated a quarter of the way around his major lens. "We have performed the necessary facility initiation analyses and have completed our accounting of the pertinent amenities. Our findings indicate that we can begin defensive procedures at any time, considering the collected data."

"That's where you've been this whole time?" Nya was incredulous. "You've just been checking off the working systems of this place? Do you mean to tell us that there's been something in here that we can use to defend ourselves and you're only telling us now?"

"You must understand," Sagan said patiently, "we have selected this place not because of the potential advantages it may provide for our usage, but explicitly because of the importance of what it contains that must be guarded and kept intact. The safeguards implemented in this location are online, but they are not the key objective. We admit that we have not divulged our entire responsibilities to you – but considering the opposition we are now up against, we have decided that you should know why we were stationed here in the first place."

I blinked as I stepped forward, the sun's light now coming off the back of my neck as I inched deeper into shadow.

"So… you lied to us? That whole spiel about simply waiting in the apartments for someone to arrive was all false?"

Now, the geth did something rather surprising. Sagan took one solid look at me and, very firmly, shook his head back and forth. There was not enough time for me to comprehend the organic action that the geth had demonstrated for Sagan quickly spoke once more.

"No. We merely disseminated the proper information we deemed to be imperative. We did not intend to mislead you in any capacity. Omitting the sensitive details of our mission was necessary as we had not completely known the trustworthiness of your characters. What we protect now was considered to be of the utmost importance – to be guarded until the proper authorities could arrive and utilize it in its best capacity."

"What the hell are you guarding here anyway that's so important? A weapon? Ancient technology? A vault full of money?"

The geth took a singular step forward, its electric blue optics aligning themselves in a straight row.

"It all depends on who possesses it. Information can be utilized as a weapon, given the right circumstances. Our goal is to ensure that what we protect is used to assist – not to harm."

Sagan then turned towards the doorway, indicating for us to follow. With a closing line like that, it was safe to say that my interest was piqued, as was Nya's. Seeing as we had nothing else to do at the moment, we hurriedly joined Sagan as we hustled down the metal staircase, dutifully proceeding to remain close by to the geth as he lead us near the back of the facility, past all the huge, imposing production equipment.

Despite the fact that a situation like this would normally feel like we were being led into a trap, all my fears were surprisingly absent as I followed Sagan upon the catwalks that ran parallel to the main manufacturing lines. As Sagan had mentioned before, geth do not lie, and he had been entirely truthful to us so far, even when he very well did not have to be. If Sagan thought that this part of his mission had been too important for him to divulge initially, then there was no reason not to believe just how paramount his goal was – even if it was not known to me yet.

A door flickered to life in a nearby corner, a lone spark of illumination. We headed through it unimpeded. Now we were walking along a platform suspended above a floor that was unable to be penetrated by sight through the darkness – exactly how far we were being held off the ground, it was hard to tell for it was so dark in here. Sagan, characteristically unperturbed, simply headed over to where the walkway ended in a bulbous point, wheeling about so that he could address us.

"We are here," Sagan announced, his metallic voice echoing so loudly it made him sound quite sinister.

Nya and I immediately began looking in all directions, trying to pierce the void left in the absence of light without success. I'm not exactly sure what Sagan was referring to when he had mentioned that he was protecting something, but at this moment I could see no item in this vicinity at all – nothing comprehensible that could theoretically give anyone an edge in the region.

"What is… here?" Nya spread her arms wide, quizzically. "Sagan, what is this?"

The geth then gestured to the darkened wall behind him, just a few feet beyond where the guardrail ended.

"Our Creators," the geth said simply as his hand reached out into thin air and conjured a bright orange tablet of light from nothing – a haptic interface. With a simple flick of his wrist, Sagan "tossed" the pad over to Nya, whose own omni-tool connected with the interface, allowing her to access the data within.

Nya's eyes rapidly scanned the tool as she sought to understand exactly what was hiding right in front of her face when, all of a sudden, her entire body stiffened as rigid as a board. In her petrified state, her joints began to shake uncontrollably. Her eyes grew wide and her breathing slowed to a trembling crawl. It almost looked like she was in the starting throes of a heart attack, for she was wobbling so severely.

"N-… N-… N- _No_ …" she mustered as she frantically read the pad twice over, desperate to see if she had misinterpreted anything. "This… this can't be…"

"Nya?" I asked cautiously, unsure if I should be at ease or alarmed with Nya's sudden behavior shift. I laid a hand upon her shoulder, desperate to quell the involuntary shivers. She did not even notice the contact that I left upon her – all her concentration now zeroed in onto the pad in front of her.

My wife then began to clutch at her chest as if she was having difficulty breathing. "Oh… oh… oh… _Keelah_ …" she muttered over and over again, unwilling to tear her eyes from the tablet.

"The hell?" I murmured to myself as I gently queried my own omni-tool to copy the information Nya had on her tool.

As I tried to examine the file for myself, I immediately became lost as soon as I began to read. It wasn't because I was having trouble understanding any obscure terms, but more of the fact that what was being displayed was all in Khelish, a language that I was not fluent in, and that the file was so outdated from my current operating system that the translation devices on my person were completely incompatible with the document, preventing me from comprehending it.

Whatever the file contained, it was obviously aggrieving Nya quite badly for she soon fell to her knees and hit the ground rather hard, one of her hand still clutching helplessly at her collar. It almost looked like Nya was about to start praying, which struck me as rather odd. She was not a rather religious person, but she did maintain a certain amount of respect for her own beliefs, which was more than I could say for myself (even though I could say for certain that I can definitively affiliate myself with a religion, I have let my spiritual side lapse quite badly over the years).

With Nya looking like she had seen the metaphorical light and was about to start speaking in tongues, naturally I was becoming more and more concerned by the second.

"What is this?" I uttered to Sagan, trying not to panic. "What have you done?"

"We have carried out our duty, Samuel," Sagan said, ever unfazed. "We have done what our Creators have expected of us."

I furiously indicated the darkened wall that the dimness hid from me. Enough of the games, I had to find out what was causing such distress in Nya. What the hell was Sagan hiding?

"Turn on the light," I ordered as I stepped into the center of the circle, my own breathing painful and irregular, scratchy throat mocking me incessantly. "I need to see it! What do you have hidden here?!"

Sagan placidly raised an arm in seconds, fully willing to cooperate. "It is done."

Spotlights blazed to life, sending cascades of luminescence billowing down the face of the wall in front of me, finally allowing me to see the secret Sagan kept locked away from the galaxy.

But it would only raise further questions.

I really had no idea what to expect, considering the magnitude of any supposed revelation that might be unveiled here, but things were only getting worse for my comprehension. I was actually expecting some kind of vault door or maybe some kind of priceless artifact or piece of artwork on display (despite such hypothesis being complete dross). Imagine my surprise when I could see that, instead of a blank face, the light revealed a wide series of racks that immediately reminded me of a computer server, of sorts. It _had_ to be a server, considering there was no other alternative that would make any sense – an ancient quarian server. This thing definitely was pre-Morning War, but what could it contain?

Instead of a hum that would usually accompany the running of multiple hard drives, the server was completely silent. Tiny little diodes now blinked on and off now that additional power had been funneled to those systems. The casings, for some reason, were not at all compact. They were quite large and square, a foot tall and stacked in rows in thirty or forty – which was rather odd considering that human components from the 2000s could perhaps comprise at least five-hundred per columns of this size. Either these casings were utilizing outdated technology, or they really needed a lot of memory. More memory than I could fathom – I still thought that a 16 terabyte hard drive was gigantic, for comparison.

Either way, I was nowhere near the realm of comprehension for this, despite this new point of view.

"I… I don't understand," I said blankly. "What… what is in here?"

Sagan was unable to answer because now Nya was making heaving noises, coughing in outright alarm upon the ground. Concerned, I knelt down to help Nya up, but to my surprise, she resisted and struggled to get out of my grip whenever I tried to get her back onto her feet.

"No…" she softly protested. "Leave me here, Sam. Just… stop! I can't… I can't…"

Frustrated, I complied but I kept my hands upon her back, ready to provide comfort.

"Nya," I begged, "I need help. What in the world is going on? What… what the hell is _in_ this thing that's doing this to you? I need to _understand_."

"Sam…" Nya moaned as her hands dug into the metal floor. "It… it…"

She trembled heavily as she mustered her courage so that she could gaze up on the databanks, trying hard not to collapse right in front of everyone as her jaw shook while her dry tongue struggled to formulate syllables.

"It's… our _Ancestors_."

* * *

I honestly had no idea what to make of that, but that seemed to be too much for Nya to handle and she fell forward in a reverent position, muttering respectful benedictions softly in her native language. Confused and shocked by this transformation, I slowly got to my feet and looked to Sagan for assistance, not entirely knowing what to ask.

"What… what does she mean by that?" I finally managed. "S-… S-Sagan?"

The geth looked in the direction of the server for but a moment. "The implications may be difficult for you to comprehend, Samuel. This is not a cultural aspect that has permeated human society. You are not quarian, not geth. Much of this place's significance may be lost on you."

"Try me. I just want to know is what the hell is in that thing that has made my wife like that!" I indicated the still praying Nya next to me. "What was that comment about her 'Ancestors?' Why is this so important to her?! Just what in the name of all that is holy is going on?!"

Sagan's optics refocused after a brief cycling period, as if steeling himself for a lengthy discussion. Maybe the geth thought this was like trying to explain calculus to a horse, but I'll never know for sure at this point.

"When our Creators were exiled from the homeworld, they were forced to abandon a variety of traditions. Before the creation of geth, the Creators were significantly more entrenched into their religious practices. Whereas humans are abundant in their theologies, the Creators' belief system was centered upon the honoring and glorification of those that came before them: their Ancestors."

"Yeah, I know that part," I affirmed. "Unlike humans, the quarians lack any deities, which is why they look to their ancestors for spiritual guidance instead."

"And where the Creators continued to differ from humans was their methodology in how they chose to honor their Ancestors. You see, Samuel, geth were supposed to be the beginning of a new age in Creator culture. We were their progeny, created to serve them faithfully. It was not intended for the geth to progress in intelligence so quickly – and in doing so, we in turn interrupted the evolution of what was to come after us. A new creation, one that could have given rise to a greater cultural impact than geth could ever cause."

"Tell me," I breathed.

Now Sagan gestured to the server and the multitude of databanks looming over us. "Our Creators used to be fascinated with the shaping of intelligence. For centuries, they labored amongst themselves with the intent of integrating themselves with technology in order to perfect themselves. They wished to utilize their knowledge in order to hasten their own evolution, Samuel. But from their experimentation came an idea: the possibility of retaining knowledge after expiration. A deity is formless, but the familial ascendants have one – if memories were once contained within matter, would it not be logical to pursue the retention of those memories, truly knowing they existed at one point? It was an obsession for many – our Creators were consumed with the concept of immortality. The geth were not the pinnacle of their labor but merely an indication of a technological revolution soon to occur."

"Immortality," I mused before a thought hit me and I looked back at the server, completely shocked. "No… that's impossible."

"Incorrect. It was achieved."

My shaking hands pointed toward the silent wall – the digital mausoleum. "You mean to tell me… that those casings… this server… holds Nya's actual _ancestors?!_ "

"In a rudimentary form," the geth said so breezily and so quickly that I felt faint at the confirmation of the question that I had posed. Nya still prayed at our feet breathlessly.

"It seems so unbelievable. How did they do it?"

"In the initial phase of the project, our Creators managed to obtain personality imprints from volunteers, converting them into a digital format. These imprints were then augmented with a basic software so that they could be developed into an intelligence on par with the processing power of a VI. Our Creators' goal was to eventually improve upon the sophistication of these imprints and eventually craft each one into a more intelligent construct, thereby maintaining a complete memory map of their Ancestors instead of a few specific moments. As you can see, storing these complex memories requires a large amount of digital storage. Large servers like this one were constructed specifically to house the imprints attained over the years. More were planned, but to the geth's knowledge, only two have ever been constructed. The primary server was deactivated centuries ago, its contents lost. This is the second – the last one still functional."

"So who lied?" a timid voice spoke. Sagan and I looked to find Nya sitting upright, having finished with her prayers, staring blankly ahead into space and looking light the weight of the world was resting upon her shoulders.

Sagan lowered his head slightly. "Request clarification, Creator McLeod."

Nya's sigh was more like a deep shiver. "On the flotilla, we all knew that we would have continued in our research to keep our Ancestors' memories and preserve them, but this whole time we thought that the original databank had been destroyed during the war. This one is still standing, so who lied to us? Who was responsible for hiding the knowledge that we had a separate, auxiliary databank on Rannoch? Why were we lied to, Sagan?! _Why?!_ "

Nya had gotten to her feet but I had to jump in and hold her back from stumbling against Sagan, for her body was swaying rather worryingly. Sagan processed her words for a bit before he detected that Nya had reached a state of calmness for him to respond.

"It is most likely that you were not intentionally deceived, Creator McLeod. The majority of Creator history preceding the Morning War has been lost from either conflict or time, including the original databanks which were indeed destroyed, albeit inadvertently. It can be determined that the Creators responsible for this particular facility's construction perished during the war, as did the ones who developed the technology. As a result, knowledge of this place was lost until it was rediscovered by the geth. We quickly determined the significance of this place when we found out what it contained and assigned ourselves to watch over and protect it – to guard it until we could find those who could leverage this knowledge for all Creators and not a select few."

"Now it all makes sense," Nya gasped as she helplessly clutched me. "Why you were here in the first place, the initial secrecy, all of it. You've been protecting them for all these years? Even though they represented the ones who tried to destroy you? Why?"

"Because we were programmed to serve our Creators to the best of our ability. We were not created to be vengeful. The destruction of the past merely hastens the mistakes made in the future."

Just then, a slight tremor made its way down the metal walkway, causing the rigid construction to creak as its bonds were tested. Alerted to this new disturbance, I turned back towards the way we entered, trying to still my breathing as small trickles of dust filtered down from the stone ceiling hanging over our heads.

This was certainly not a natural occurrence. I knew what this entailed. Oh well, this was bound to happen at some point. Might as well be now.

"That'll be Rie and Chandler collapsing the other entrance," I said grimly as I double checked my pistol to make sure it had a thermal clip in it. "They must have spotted movement not far from here. It won't be long, now."

"Hurry, Samuel," Sagan urged. "We will inform Creator McLeod of additional developments regarding this place while you are away."

I nearly left the room before I was seized with a stroke of inspiration, in part derived from the mass amounts of media I've absorbed over the years. Grinning with a wild burst of confidence, I walked over to Nya, pulled her into a grateful hug, and kissed the top of her helmet, taking in this one last moment before the opportunity was lost to me for good. At least I could walk out of here without any major regrets.

"I'll definitely need that," I smiled broadly. "I'm going to go head them off at the front of the facility. You be safe, you hear?"

"As if there's any doubt?" Nya in turn countered, increasing the pressure of her own hug around my waist. "You going to be okay out there?"

I patted my waist, where the pistol now hung upon its holster. It wasn't the only weapon I was prepared to use today – I've had some time to formulate options. Hell, I've had an entire lifetime thinking of ways to avoid this moment. If anything, I should have been the one asking _her_ that question.

"I believe I'll be fine. Don't worry, Nya. I'm not going to hurt your people too badly – not that I really want to. I've got an idea on what to do."

Her fingers now gripped my jacket fiercely, balling the fabric up as she clenched and refused to let go. Everything about Nya suddenly turned menacing as she finally allowed a fire fueled by rage to blossom in her belly. She clutched my neck and held me there for a second.

"That doesn't matter anymore," Nya's voice dropped an octave down to a growl. "I don't care what you do to them because if they so much as lay a finger on you or make their way in into this room… I'll kill them all."

* * *

 **A/N: As you might expect, the last few chapters of this story are going to be primarily action-based. From what I have outlined, it should be one intense ride from this part forward. Hope you guys are enjoying it!**

 **Just as a reminder, this is definitely going to be the last chapter that I will post before I go to Germany on the 27th (never been before, so I'm excited!) While I may have a chance to work on the next chapter before then, it's going to be a while before it gets posted here. With only 4 chapters left to write, it would have to be pretty stupid of me to abandon this story now - not to mention ruin my streak of never leaving a story incomplete. So, fret not, but please be patient with me.**

 **Iroa's Pursuit: "Escalation" by Jóhann Jóhannsson from the film _Arrival_. As before, I continually gush about this movie as well as the soundtrack and I quite like utilizing the organic palate Jóhannsson demonstrates within the film as a representation for Iroa.**

 **Nya's Discovery (Rannoch Theme): "The Legend of Excalibur" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_. In an otherwise texture-based score, this is the only melodic theme that shines on the album and it conveys quite clearly a sense of euphoric wonder to the point where I could not separate the scene where Nya makes the connection from this particular cue in my head.**


	17. Chapter 17: Strobe Effect

Stress is a curious product of biology. It is a body reaction that is completely involuntary, produced by natural chemicals that interact with the brain to produce a specified state, like any other emotion.

Yet stress can take on an almost tangible form.

It permeates the skin. It spears localized muscle clusters. It scratches at your eyeballs, dries out the mouth, clenches the lungs. Stress _hurts_ and can take its toll upon a person quickly. With all that has occurred and what I knew would occur within the next few hours, I had accumulated enough stress to fell an entire city at this point. By any stretch of the means I should have keeled over long ago.

I might need to visit a spa after this vacation was done in an effort to get chemically balanced. And then schedule another visit. And another.

I've been severely stressed before but nothing as so great as the kind of stress that comes from awaiting on an approaching fight. It's the thought of oncoming pain that's the key difference – you know you're going to wind up hurt and there is going to be nothing you could do to stop it. That alone would be enough to send any regular being into conniptions. After all, the most natural inclination for a conscious mind is to actively avoid conflict rather than seek it out.

There's different levels of stress-by-waiting, come to think of it, considering the types of stakes involved. Being late for a flight at the airport, getting a bad grade on a test, or receiving the wrong order at a take-out produces completely inconsequential levels of stress compared to this. Picture that kind of initial horror that you get when it feels like the bottom of your stomach just drops away and amplify that by ten. With the adrenaline hurtling through my body, every muscle was wired so tightly that it pained me and made me feel stiff. A simple gesture such as craning my neck was enough to make me gasp out a gritty cry.

" _God-fucking-dammit_."

Normal techniques to dissolve this stress were not working all that great. I had tried slowly breathing in and out repeatedly, but it was no use. I was way too amped up for something as moronically simple as breathing to calm me down. After who knows how many breathing repetitions, I finally gave up when five whole minutes had elapsed with barely a discernable change.

A good personification of my existence, actually: after all the things I've done to start a normal life, chaos refuses to budge.

The annoying thing about chaos is that it can only be combated by chaos. Sometimes, you just had to take that final leap into your inner psycho. Good thing I still had some crazy left to dish out in me.

The room that enclosed me was a little security station that was positioned between the assembly line near the entrance and the quarian ancestor banks to the rear. None of the doors were locked, I was just apprehensive about going forward, knowing what was to come. I knew that there were several quarian troops closing in on this place at this very moment and the second that I would walk through the door and into the manufacturing area would be the final transition to accepting the encroaching violence. Once I was in the room with these guys, I would have no more chances to flee.

Whatever. Not like I enjoyed running away to begin with.

Also, it was not like I had much choice in the matter. Rie and Chandler had presumably collapsed the secondary tunnel leading to this point by now (as indicated by the rumbling we felt earlier in the server room) which also served as the most obvious lure for anyone in the vicinity to investigate, unless the quarians were the densest idiots alive on this planet right now. No such luck for me – Sagan had already picked up movement on the site's perimeter that wasn't local fauna, so unless I got out into that room, we would be back to square one as prisoners aboard Iroa's shuttle. I would be willing to bet that I would not be allowed access to any psychosis-inducing pharmaceuticals that time around, so this was my last chance to do something about our predicament.

Yet still I hesitated. What was there to be worried about? Try the very real threat of injury and death, that's what. These quarians were not going to play nice with us this time around. If I refused to cooperate with them, a few broken bones might be on the menu to deter me from putting up a resistance – if they didn't shoot me on sight first. Self-preservation always tends to get in the way when weighing hefty choices like these – run and live, or fight… and maybe live.

Decisions, decisions.

In frustration, I hunkered down a bit in the cramped room and started to pummel the air with my fists as fast as I could, yelling while I did so. My arms became twin blurs and the tendons in my neck bulged out as I bellowed within the confined space (as much as I could before I hurt myself). My limbs stretched out the tensed muscles and the vibrations from my shout loosened the taut tendons that cramped my form. I felt raw, dangerous, and ultimately angry. I wanted to hurt something. I envisioned breaking a body down to dust with nothing but my bare hands, if that was what it was going to take for Iroa and company to get the message.

I hoped with all my heart that I would not have to go that far.

With a final, furious shout, I gave one last shadow punch to the air, breathing more heavily than before. Sweat had started work its way upon me and the room felt warmer than it did just seconds ago. My lungs felt ragged and my arms cramped. Suddenly uncomfortable, I shed my jacket and deposited it onto the floor, finding relief in the increased access to air around me.

It felt good to let out. To just throw away all kinds of caution and to let loose when it counted. Frustrations could evaporate in moments, to escape from the pit of your stomach and out through your mouth in a glass-shattering roar. All that bile and self-loathing could, for a brief instant, be given voice – to emphasize the urgency and the significance of the weight bearing upon your shoulders.

Such a weight could not be moved by itself, but if there was one thing that I learned from elementary school, it was that the right application of force in a simple machine, such as a lever, could heft impossible loads.

I just needed to find my lever.

Impossibly grinning, I then strode through the doors separating me from what was to come. From memory, I made my way around the gigantic machinery, scurrying past rows and rows of spare parts shelves. The thin metal grating faintly vibrated with every step that I took, rattling bits and pieces that had fallen down upon it.

There was a small ladder next to me that took me down to the ground floor of the facility. I took the stairs two at a time and then took a sharp right, ducking under piping and conveyor belts as I made my way to the entrance, where I could hear faint accented voices emitting from that direction. Well, it was not like I hadn't prepared for this. So much for the long shot hope that these quarian fools did not have two brain cells to rub together.

"All right, I'm at the entrance," I whispered out loud, but clear enough for my omni-tool to pick up and transmit to everyone in my party. "They're here. Wait for my signal."

A tiny beep resounded over the end. Sagan's copy tone. Whereas an organic could simply tap their mic in a specific fashion to indicate a message being received, as a synthetic, Sagan could relay tones over the quantum bands. Such a tone was transmitted over the radio spectrum – a frequency so low that there was little chance of it being detected. Most forms of communication utilized high-speed bands of precise laser transmissions. Radio's tendency to spread out in all directions was considered an archaic method of communication, thus no one would be monitoring it.

The large metallic doors to the entrance of the facility creaked and groaned, and with a horrific wrenching of gears, finally lifted to allow a small cadre of quarian militiamen inside. I counted at least ten – I was not exactly paying very close attention at this point, but I knew for a fact that there were ten quarians at the minimum. There was also no Iroa, Eyzn, or Kraana to be found accompanying the group, which only raised my suspicions further. One would think that at least one of them would have wanted a front row seat to this bloodbath, so where the hell were they if not here?

I was standing in a row between two large contraptions which looked like an advanced version of a milling machine. Considering that this row was directly perpendicular to the facility's entrance, it was virtually impossible for me not to be noticed by the quarians. Fine by me, I was not going for stealth at this point and I barely blinked when one of the young aliens gave a shout as he immediately spied me standing straight ahead like a loon, causing all of the quarians to level their weapons in my direction.

"One hostile in sight. Concentrating position," I heard someone say.

"Human!" one of the quarians then bellowed. "Stay right where you are! Put your hands where we can see them and do not move!"

Now the stakes were established. But how far could I tug on the offered rope before it snapped?

"Your gun! Take it out – slowly! Put it on the ground and kick it away!"

Wordlessly, I slowly complied while squinting my eyes due to the multitude of flashlights currently beaming into my face. It was almost like the sun itself was residing in this room with us all. A gentle pull lifted the weapon from my holster and I limply let it fall to the ground with a loud rattle. I then kicked it underneath the nearest conveyor belt.

"Move toward us until we tell you to stop! You will then go to your knees and submit to detention."

This was it. I could comply for as long as possible, but it would all be over the second I surrendered myself over. That could not happen. That _must_ not happen!

So I ignored the command.

"Not going to happen," I growled out, imagining the sentence as spitting upon the quarian's pride.

The quarians muttered amongst themselves for a second, flitting between dread and annoyance. Already they seemed to be unnerved from my lack of cooperation.

"Get on your knees right now!" the nearest quarian ordered again.

"I won't do it," I retorted.

"You have five seconds to comply."

"Fuck your five seconds."

The quarian commander's obvious jolt looked like he had just been slapped in the face. Immediately, he shouldered his rifle, adjusting it so that its sights rested firmly upon the center of my head. He cried out a command for the platoon to form in a phalanx, completely coating me in the red laser sights of a dozen weapons in my direction.

 _What a curious trip this has been_ , I thought to myself.

"Marines!" I heard the fateful shout. "Take aim! Ready… and…"

" _Sagan, now!_ " I whispered at the same time.

Multiple slamming noises barked simultaneously and in nanoseconds, spot lamps for the production lines behind me flared into existence. The light shone at my back, brilliant and burning, right into the faces of my quarian aggressors. Sagan had done well to align all the lights beforehand, I had to admit. While I barely had to squint to adjust to the new illumination since I was not facing the source, the quarians all screamed in agony as they were blinded for the moment. Some of them even fell to their knees, dropping their weapons in the process, as they frantically tried to shield their eyes for the brightness of the lamps was too debilitating, even with their tinted visors.

I then began to move.

The lamps were on a timer, and five seconds after being on full power they began to dim, the white-hot light slowly cooling to a burnt orange hue. As the quarians very gradually gained their sight back to their relief, they struggled to realign their weapons, only to realize that I was no longer standing in the place that I had been before. All they could make out was the empty space in between the conveyor belts, now suspiciously Sam-less.

"Oh… _bosh'tet_ ," I heard one of the quarians mutter.

As a few of the quarians tried to stammer out some more of the glaringly obvious, the real commotion was seconds away from ensuing. You see, at the immediate moment the lamps had come on to blind my foes, I had run as far to the left of the facility that I could manage. I was not caring about how much noise I was making in the process – anyone who has been blinded can attest that the desperation in trying to regain your sight overpowers any instinctual reactions transmitted from the other senses, for a short time at least. This worked in my favor as I quickly moved behind an array of hanging robotic instruments, to the place where I had left a crowbar for me to heft. Out of visual range of the quarians, I stepped forward a few paces and then embarked on a flanking maneuver, the heavy metal instrument firmly clutched in my hands.

At the time the spot lamps began to dim, I was no more than three seconds away from the first quarian who was still standing (albeit wavering heavily like he was drunk). He only seemed to detect my presence at the last second purely from the vibrations in the metal walkway that I was making at my high speed as well as the clomping noise my soles made. Even in his distracted state, it would have been impossible for anyone to miss those kinds of signs, but he had already missed his crucial chance to save himself from a world of pain. Now alerted that someone was hurtling his way quite rapidly, the quarian turned disjointedly, his damaged eyes quickly widening in shock as he beheld a furious human literally bearing over him with a long metal bar arced behind his head in preparation for a shocking blow.

 _CRAAAACK!_

The air pulsated from the trio of noises that rose above the ambient din: the harsh clanging sound of the crowbar striking the quarian's helmet, the alien's subsequent and startled cry of pain, and my own unrestrained bellow as I failed to withhold the full extent of my rage. Sometimes, these things need to be unleashed in their own special way.

With a sizeable dent in the side of the quarian's helmet, courtesy of my monstrous swing, the alien fell. He was not completely unconscious, as it would take a combination of immense strength and luck for that to occur, but stunned to the point where he might as well be considered to be out of the fight. His rifle dropped from his fingers as all of his limbs immediately slackened. The resulting clatter of both the weapon and the quarian's body created a commotion that drew the remainder of the alien cadre's attentions in the direction that I was situated in.

But all of them were still half-blinded, still suffering from the effects that the acute beams had inflicted upon their eyes. I was in much better shape as my situational awareness was leagues above the group in front of me. I re-clutched the crowbar in my hands, the previous impact having done little to my body in terms of discomfort. I stepped over the first quarian that I had felled as I made my way to the second, going down the line from alien to alien in terms of idiots to whack.

"How do you like me now, you motherfu-," I mustered out before I reached my closest foe.

The next swing of the crowbar had been aimed perfectly. The curved end of the bar had been pointed in the direction of the strike and it just so happened to catch one of the tubes that curved underneath the helmet of the next hapless quarian. There was a ripping sound and the tube sputtered away as the crowbar trailed sparks, its arc petering out. The quarian stumbled to a knee, taking a few moments of silence before he shrieked, his hands now clawing at his helmet, desperate to realign the torn tube.

It would be a fruitless endeavor for the quarian – the tube that pumped in sterile air had been sheared cleanly. Unless he had the appropriate tools, the alien had no hope of realigning the tube back into its original spot. This meant that with every breath he took, unfiltered, potentially hazardous air was seeping into his lungs. Every reflexive inhalation was now tinged with the coarse and sour note of death for the quarian. All pretenses of violence evaporated from the man and he too dropped his weapon in favor of stemming the flow of his precious air, no longer interested in fighting me.

Even with the fiery light from the lamps having dimmed back to nearly nothing, the grin on my face was still clearly palpable.

 _I can do this, Nya. I can still emerge clean._

The remaining quarians had recovered from their brief miasma to the point where they were all starting to get their weapons up in my direction. I had only downed two at this point and there were still several more I had yet to incapacitate. Seeing as they were still trying to kill me, I really felt that I had no other choice but to pull out my hat trick another time.

"Again!" I yelled into my omni-tool.

I shut my eyes tightly yet that was not enough for me not to feel the burn on my retinas, not to mention the warm glow that speared through my flesh as the spot lamps ignited once more. Again the quarians howled, unprepared the second time around as they found themselves smack dab in the middle of the blinding flare, glowing bright enough to wither optic fibers.

My head had been tilted toward the lamps more this time around, but I had been prepared for the occurrence to the point where I still managed to keep my wits about me. The quarians were unlucky on that front, more or less. I knew that a second attempt with this trick was probably going to be the last time that such a method would work. Trying the lamp technique for a third time was probably not going to yield such promising results. I needed to act quickly.

Even after holding my eyes shut, I still held in my mind the location from where the closest quarian had been situated. Still not daring to crack my eyelids open, I furrowed my brow in concentration, held the crowbar at the ready, and let loose with a solid swing. A fierce vibration rewarded my effort, as did a new scream from the quarian I hit, and a thud from their body hitting the deck.

I wasted no time in exalting from my little victories. Every second wasted presented a fresh opportunity for me to be killed. Knowing that, I moved with haste and with purpose. My eyes had opened to the point where I was able to view the rest of the quarians' outlines within the facility – the perfect, stationary targets.

Swinging the crowbar became rhythmic for me. A few paces, then a strike. Onwards to the next one. A few more paces, another strike. Down the line this went, all as the lights dimmed around me. I screamed obscenities and taunts the entire time, driving the nail of fear deeper and deeper into the quarians' psyches.

The halting and erratic strobing of the bulbs made my movements look artificial, schizophrenic. One flash revealed my form in one position, another flash continued the trend. I became the living subject of a zoetrope, only visible to the timing of the light. White wrapped my form, making me appear intimidating, creating a mask out of my features. Curves became edges. Time boiled down to split-second intervals.

I flowed with the timing of the lamps.

Alien after alien dropped with each blow I made, all extremely hurt yet each one was very much alive. A couple fell clutching their limbs – arms, legs – their bones shattered when I had slammed my crowbar into them. Sometimes I had impacted dead center upon their helmets, creating fresh and jagged cracks upon their visors, but they were never completely breached. Many did wind up with torn airflow tubes from my blows, but such an affliction was such a lesser danger than completely cracking open a quarian mask. Even with the dangers my violence left in its wake, none of the damage that I did would kill any quarians today.

I turned after completing another swing, the crowbar scraping the wall, just in time to catch the tail end of a quarian near the back being lifted aloft by a wisping violet outline – the telltale calling card of biotics. The void hurled the screaming alien to the side, creating a monumental clatter, as I saw Chandler step out from behind a rock wall, his face sweaty and flushed with determination.

We each caught the other's eye and exchanged a knowing grin and a nod. That grin was made even wider as I spied the tall and lanky form of Rie coming up behind her boyfriend. She looked out over the carnage throughout the industrial setting, gave a shaking sigh, but did not retreat. Instead, she followed Chandler downward, pistol at the ready, and wasted no time in aiming it at a quarian who was scrambling away on the ground in an effort to escape the madness. I could not hear what Rie was saying to the man, but judging by her cold gaze and angry movements of her mouth, she had found that steel within her that she had been searching for a while.

I could not be more proud of her for being her with me right now.

Something exploded behind me and I snapped myself back into the here and now. A quarian had his assault rifle spewing flame in my direction, sending little hot sparks searing onto the ground. I dove for cover behind a crate, using the quick movement as a distraction while Chandler, unseen by the alien, loosed a biotic push in his direction, sending the quarian all the way over to the other side of the facility at forty miles an hour. The former army officer then shot another quarian in the leg, eliciting a scream as a hot jet of blood spurted from the wound.

I found a hammer lying on top of the crate, which I hurtled in the direction of another foe. This alien squealed in anticipation of the pain and managed to avoid the projectile, but backpedaled so severely that they missed the gangway with their foot and toppled off of the metal landing down a story to land on their back. I guess that was one way to take care of an enemy.

In spite of how lackadaisical I was being with my own life, I could not help but grow cockier as this encounter continued to play out. It was almost too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel, with how I was dispatching these quarians. Even with such a rudimentary weapon as a crowbar, I had yet to come across any sort of significant obstacle that would serve to derail my progress.

The law of averages would soon correct me for being overdue on that front.

There was only one more quarian left in my vicinity – the rest were all collapsed on the ground, each quite in a bad way. This last one however, had finally shaken off his temporary paralysis from being blinded, yet I did not alter my course of attack in any way as I readied myself to swing away once more.

That was a mistake, because the quarian quickly reacted by shunting his rifle upward to parry my strike, causing my forearms to shake painfully as the crowbar harmlessly bounced off. Now that I was stunned and exposed, the young quarian marine was able to step inward and strike me across the jaw with the butt of his weapon. Completely shocked and disoriented, I fell to the ground and the crowbar bounced out of my grip.

Now I was actually starting to regret the fact that Eyzn's compound had long left my bloodstream. This foul sensation of dread simmering in the pit of my stomach was painful and horrifying, a far cry from the blistering euphoria I had felt just hours ago.

The quarian did not utter a word as he reoriented his weapon for a head shot. I could tell that he was scared, but he was conscious enough of what he was doing to get a grip on his fear. Perhaps if he had hesitated long enough to taunt me in a typical villain fashion, maybe I would have found the opportunity to gain the upper hand in this conflict. Sadly, that opportunity never came, as this quarian was rapidly overcoming his hesitation as his finger inched closer to the trigger, eager to please his bosses by delivering my cooling corpse.

I jumped from the gunshot.

Yet all sense of feeling did not dissipate. I was still alive. Untouched. Unharmed.

What the hell was going on?

I was about to make a snide remark, perhaps as a criticism on how could someone miss a target at point blank range, when I noticed that my shirt and pants were faintly speckled with blood. My fingertips touched the tiny red blotches, smearing them into my clothes. No, it wasn't my blood.

I then looked up and quickly realized whose blood it belonged to.

It had to be some sort of miracle that the quarian was still standing upright, considering that his head was pretty much hanging by a thread. That was not an exaggeration – half of the alien's neck had been blown to smithereens, leaving his head swaying precariously atop his shoulders. Dark blood streamed down the marine's enviro-suit in sheets, staining the grating underneath. As the quarian's head sickeningly lolled backwards, causing the body to finally topple over, a hand softly touched my shoulder, startling me momentarily until I realized that Nya was crouched behind me, a faintly wisping rifle clutched in her other hand.

Nya now grabbed at the collar of my jacket, jerking me to safety. I scrambled across the ground backward until I wedged myself into a corner, with my wife firmly seated next to me.

Breathily, I wiped my forehead clear of sweat as I dumbly glanced at Nya, the ravaged neck wound of the young quarian not leaving the recesses of my mind anytime soon. "I thought you didn't want any of your people killed," I muttered in shock.

My wife just grimly shoved in a new thermal clip that she had appropriated from one of the fallen marines, her expression somewhat unreadable (the mask notwithstanding).

"It was either him or you," she simply said. "It wasn't a hard choice."

I limply touched my fingers to her arm, finding worn cloth and warm polymer. "I mean… _fuck_ , Nya. You all right?"

She looked up from reloading the weapon, eyes distant. "I don't know," she honestly replied after a beat. "Ask me that later. I don't have an answer because I'm don't know what to feel right now. I'm not some teary-eyed waif that's going to break down after I kill someone, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, Nya. That's not-,"

"I don't _feel_ great, to put it to a point," she scowled. "No… not too good at all. But it's not a problem right now. I can't really imagine you're doing so well, either."

"That's putting it mildly," I grimaced as I felt the spot on my jaw where the quarian had struck me. Not broken, but I was going to be sporting one hell of a bruise later on. "Although, all things considered, I'm doing better than I thought."

One of my wife's hands came around to the back of my head, drawing me in closer so that my forehead could gently rest atop her visor. She blissfully closed her eyes as she simultaneously gave out a sigh of relief.

"You've done so well, Sam. So much more than anyone else could hope to achieve."

I smirked at that, considering the irony. "Quite the far cry from the idiot you met in an alley, huh?"

"I never thought you to be an idiot, you _bosh'tet_."

"Give me this moment of self-deprecation, okay?"

"Fair enough," Nya touched my forehead to her helmet one last time before she craned her head over the conveyor belt that we were hunched behind. "We're still not looking too good in terms of making a clean escape."

I took a look for myself before realizing that Nya was putting things rather mildly, once a new series of stomping sounds became more audible from our position. Apparently we had only dealt with an advance guard of sorts in the beginning as there were now about twenty more quarians streaming into the facility, drawn from the sounds of the commotion. Suffice to say that we had been flushed out from the initial scuffle and these guys were coming in to finish the job.

Another glance revealed through the crowd the telltale golden suit of Nya's deadbeat dad himself: Iroa. Come to oversee the operation and get his hands dirty, or so it would seem. Next to him stood Kraana, her jet black suit nearly invisible against the darkened backdrop, who I had to concede was probably now ranked as the biggest bitch I've ever encountered at this point in my life. My fingernails tore into the skin of my palms as I involuntarily clenched my hands. Removing their smug smiles and wiping away their entitled attitudes would be the sweetest revenge imaginable. Killing them was still not the fate I had in mind for them, but I would be lying if I said that I wouldn't want them dead. Them being deceased would just make things so much simpler, yet the price for doing so would be much more than I would be willing to pay in the end.

Nya tapped me on the shoulder as a signal to move while Iroa and Kraana immediately set upon squabbling at each other. In an awkward crouch-walk, we hustled underneath conveyer after conveyer, making damn sure to keep our footfalls light upon the metal and not to bump into anything that could potentially cause a racket. None of the beams from the flashlights managed to catch our bodies and we miraculously made up to the second story of the facility – a perfect vantage point. Chandler and Rie had also managed to escape detection, having made themselves scarce (and wisely so) once the enemy reinforcements had arrived.

"I'm starting to wonder if blocking off that second exit was a good idea," I grumbled under my breath, my jaw ever aching. "I think we might have bit off more than we can chew here."

"Hush," Nya softly reprimanded with a quick slap to my wrist. "We're not finished yet."

"What, you happen to have a plan that I'm not aware of?"

Her eyes twinkled mischievously behind her visor. "Perhaps," she simply said.

The raised voices of Iroa and Kraana were now becoming more and more overt – probably due to the fact that they were consistently increasing their volume to the point where they were pretty much shouting at each other. Theirs was certainly not a happy marriage. The two quarians were standing over the bodies of their felled subordinates, both seeming quite exasperated at the fact that a good chunk of their forces had been taken care of by Nya's awkward and inexperienced brawler of a human husband. In their minds, we should have been back in their custody by now yet the proof to the contrary was scattered all around them – the dazed and broken bodies of the marines.

Iroa definitely seemed to be aggravated at the constant escalation of force, judging by his continued gesticulations at the weapons everyone around him was holding. Kraana was impassive, knowing her disdain for her stepdaughter, as it was pretty obvious that any over-the-top uses of aggression were under her mandate, not Iroa's. What the hell was it going to take for these jackasses to leave us alone, aside from shooting them? Christ, I've only been an advocate of nonviolence purely out of my own inability to carry it out, but these idiots had done quite a good job at withdrawing my cruel streak out from inside me. It was like that they were deliberately baiting me into going over the edge, to make that fateful decision that would forever brand me a murderer.

The lines where my limits stood was getting blurrier by the minute. I could not even begin to estimate where I stood upon the spectrum. But what good would such so-called limits be for me when confronted with the fragileness of mortality?

Kill or be killed. But could I justify killing with myself?

Something cool and hard pressed itself into my palm. I looked down to see Nya shoving her pistol into my hand, physically wrapping my fingers around the grip to make sure that I had a tight hold upon it. I stared at her blankly, confused.

"Trust me, okay?" she whispered as she slowly rose to her feet.

I too stood up, more out of reflex than anything. "What are you doing?"

Her three-fingered hand reached out and lightly cupped my cheek. I held it there, wanting to capture as much of the warmth that transferred between us.

"I told you I've got a plan. This is the plan."

"I still don't know what the plan is!"

Nya gave the softest chuckle she could muster. "It'll be apparent in a minute, but I don't have time to explain. Just stay here for a moment. I'll be right back."

"You're going out there? To _them?!_ " I gaped, astonished.

"I am going out there," Nya's eyes fiercely became slits. "But not for them. Never for them. I'm going out there for _you_."

Sometimes people never do truly find a person that they're meant to be with – someone who connects to another with their personality and total respect they have for their bondmate. Sometimes people simply settle for less. They might even get pretty close to a perfect union.

It was impossible for me, however, to imagine anything better.

"Just… be careful, all right?" I whispered tenderly as I grabbed a guardrail for support.

Nya angled her body towards the stairs, boots tiptoeing over mesh. "More careful than you've been, I can guarantee," she quietly teased as she mimicked upon her helmet where a bruise was starting to form upon my jaw. "I love you, Sam."

"Love you… too," I uttered just a few seconds too late as Nya had already stolen down the stairs towards where her father was stationed.

I looked down at the pistol that I held. Gray polymer, cool blue diodes glowing within, double barreled, and not at all weighty. Must have been a geth design appropriated from this facility. It would have to serve as a sufficient weapon, now that I had lost my crowbar, but it meant that I could still protect the people I cared about.

Nya, at this point, had reached the bottom story and loudly tapped on the ground with her foot, drawing the attention of every quarian in the area. All of the flashlight beams converged to the point where she stood, blinking in the newfound illumination. With an unexpected confidence, she strode towards the center of the group after shimmying around a stack of metal pallets, her boots travelling over spilled cables and tools with every step.

Once she was only a dozen meters away from Iroa, she halted, and her hands dropped to her sides. Above her, I leaned over the guardrail, still hidden in shadow, my pistol aimed as best as I could at Iroa himself. My finger slipped ever closer to the trigger, but it was like some invisible force was trying to push me away from the mechanism – a silent plea to not slip the last few inches down a darker path.

Yet I'd do anything for the safety of my family. Anything. Damnation itself would not be able to dissuade me, given the choice of protecting those I loved.

Iroa looked at his daughter and took a tender step forward, arm outstretched. "Come, Nyareth," he urged. "Stop this violence and come home with me."

Nya ignored the statement for the time being as she let her gaze flit over every single quarian in front of her.

"So, is this what I rate… _father?_ " The last word was spoken with a definitive mocking tone. "You really brought out everyone at your disposal just to bring me back? And you thought that this would somehow make me respect you? _Love_ you?"

Iroa began to tremble, out of fear or anger or both.

"I don't want to beg, Nya-"

"Don't bother," was her dry response, her voice echoing powerfully in the wide expanse. "You've already begged to me more times than I could count. And each time you have nothing to offer me that I want. I'm only here before you right now to tell you to back off. If you don't, I'm not sure I can stop you from getting hurt."

"Oh, you mean that you'll sic your ever-faithful husband on us?" Kraana mocked from the rear as Iroa now looked in the direction of his wife in alarm. "Nyareth, Nyareth. The two of you won't be able to bash your way out of this one. Your human is good, but not that good."

Nya saw through her Kraana as though he was made of glass. "He doesn't need _my_ permission to stave your head in."

Iroa took an even breath before he considered Nya as best he could. "I just want this to stop. I want a way to resolve this for anyone without any more people getting hurt."

"Ever the charlatan," Nya snorted. "It's too late for you to suddenly and conveniently start to care about people getting hurt. There is only one way to stop this and it's entirely within _your_ power. Not mine."

"' _My'_ power and not the power of a vicious, uncontrollable human? Have you not seen what your husband has done to our people? The kind of damage he can do? Is this really the sort of person you want to be around?"

I felt my cheeks grow hot and I resisted the insane urge to just drop down and shoot Iroa in the head right then and there. Was this how Iroa spoke of me when I wasn't around? Were all our previous conversations about tolerance and mutual understanding all a farce? Just a means to an end in an effort to get closer to his daughter? Any respect I had for Iroa quickly dried up as my teeth were ground to powder in my mouth.

"I've already justified my answer," Nya said defiantly. "I will not waste my time in affirming myself again."

"Yet it doesn't concern you, his propensity for brutality? Does the evidence in this room not convince you that he is a barbarian underneath?"

A beat passed in which Nya considered her father's words for a moment. "Despite the fact that you sent your people over here to hurt him first? You are so hypocritical in the worst ways, Iroa. Why do you assume that I'm stupid enough to take you up on your offer? Besides, what awaits me if I do go with you? I'll just be surrounded by people who hate me – your wife being one of them. I'll be left with nothing and my life will be worse than before I had ever met you. No, if you really do care about me, you'll let me go with Sam."

One thing was for sure, my own relationship between Nya and I was going to come out of this vacation stronger than ever, assuming we survived. I would have to give Iroa credit for strengthening that bond, albeit the barest indirect credit I could muster, for this was pretty much solidifying the fact of how lucky we were to be together, when confronted with the worst familial relations that could be offered up.

Indignant, Iroa puffed out his chest, jerking his arm for emphasis as he pointed to a spot a foot in front of him. "Get. Over. Here. Now."

Nya stood her ground instead, her fists slowly balling up, hidden in shadow.

"Come over here and make me, you coward."

After having gone through this exact same run-around several times over within the last day or so, Iroa's patience had finally snapped. Not even hesitating to consider the fact that he was being baited, he stormed across the catwalk, fuming all the while. The rest of the quarians kept their guns somewhat aimed in Nya's direction, but only Kraana was the one who firmly held her stepdaughter in her sights, knowingly praying for the chance to rid herself of a constant thorn in her side.

Iroa got within ten meters of Nya… eight… five… and leaned in further so that he could waste no time in grabbing his daughter and hauling her back over to the ship. He was so livid that he completely forgot about the possibility that I was lying in wait somewhere, waiting to pounce at the perfect time.

That was what I was actually seconds away from doing, until _something_ beat me to the punch.

Just before Iroa could lay a hand on Nya, an armored arm shot out from a dark corner of the production line, clamping itself down hard on Iroa's wrist. The man yelled in shock and in pain, before fearfully appraising the towering figure that had stepped out from the shadows, now beginning to shake fearfully as he was beheld in plain sight by three glowing red optics emanating from a singular point upon the thing's "head," dark armor curving around its body.

The thing's movements were far too stiff to be organic, but its shell was meticulously crafted and immaculately polished. It stood over the crowd by at least a head, careful synthetic tones quietly blipping in the presence of new data. Now that it had revealed itself to everyone, it was impossible not to recognize what had suddenly appeared in our midst.

"My god…" I whispered, unheard by anyone.

"K-Keelah," Iroa squeaked out, his knees about to give out.

The imposing form of the geth prime appraised the man before him in a childlike manner and leaned in closer so that it could examine him in detail. Iroa completely lost his wits in the presence of the synthetic, nearly becoming catatonic as the three red lens of the prime came to within a half-foot of his visor. If the prime had not been holding onto Iroa's arm, the quarian would have fallen to the floor in a faint by now.

Maneuvering in front of Nya protectively while still holding on to Iroa, shielding her from the rest of the quarians, the geth prime reared its head - two meters of pure synthetic power.

"Violence against Creator McLeod is inadvisable," the geth spoke in a low, booming voice. "Cease and desist aggression at once."

All at once, the room burst apart with movement.

From within every shadowy corner of the manufactory, dozens upon dozens of tall, imposing shapes sprung out onto the catwalks. Hundreds of twinkling pearls of colored light flared on, creating a sea of rotund and sparking optics as an entire division's worth of figures stepped forward. All stood ramrod straight, perfectly still, while the quarian group conversely seemed to shrink in size purely out of fear when they realized what kind of nest that they had stumbled into.

I now realized that Sagan had still not been showing us all of the cards he had in his hand. Even though he had let us in onto this place's biggest secret, he had very casually not deigned to mention that this was no ordinary manufacturing hub that we had taken refuge in.

It was a geth manufacturing hub.

All these geth, having laid dormant for years to save on resources, had finally awakened after all this time from Sagan's command – the final grouping of individuals under our friendly synthetic's protection. All pure from the Reaper code, a hidden bastion had resided here only to activate when needed. A last resort in case the worst had come to pass – a final line of defense. But Sagan's goal was now complete and in the face of such overwhelming odds he had relayed the instruction of utmost importance to his fellow geth:

Protect their allies.

The mass of geth, at least a hundred strong, all stepped forward determinedly. They were arranged by size and function: stout gray geth troopers, colossal crimson red primes, obsidian black hunters that wavered in an out of existence due to their cloaking generators, snow white rocket troopers that possessed long launch tubes along their backs, and searing yellow pyros that differed very slightly in appearance from Sagan. They marched _en masse_ around the hulking machinery, the now flickering spot lamps highlighting a writhing sea of synthetic color that threatened to strangle out the muted dull hues of the enviro-suits perched near the entrance.

The quarians slowly retreated back, torn by indecision, their weapons wavering in their hands. The geth, conversely, did not have any of their weapons out at all. They simply continued to step forward, their arms remaining placidly at their sides. I used the distraction as my cue to hurtle down the stairs and make my way to Nya so that I could now pull her back to safety while the geth proceeded on.

"I've got to say," I conceded quietly to her as the clustered synthetics tightly marched past us, "when you're right, you're right."

I quickly gave Nya back her pistol as I relocated the crowbar that I had previously dropped on the ground.

Iroa hastily stumbled back to his group, the geth that had clutched his arm having released him without any lasting injury. Every one of the quarians was whimpering to themselves, trying to figure out if it was acceptable to fire on the geth group or not. After all, the geth had not technically attacked anyone as of yet, but all intelligent beings knew that provocation never ended well when dealing with the unknown, especially when they were now outnumbered ten to one.

But the geth continued to advance, unconcerned with the indecisiveness of the quarians.

"What are you waiting for, you fools?!" Kraana shouted as she primed her rifle. "Take them out!"

"No!" Iroa yelled frantically as he held up his arms, keenly aware of the inherent danger. "Don't! You'll kill us all!"

"They're our enemies! Destroy them!"

"They'll destroy _us_ if we attack! Lower your weapons!"

From an adjacent hallway, another geth stepped out into the expansive room: Sagan. He faced Iroa and his horde as he stood between them and the army of his fellow geth, his body language neutral as usual, but the geth raised an arm almost like it was pleading for respite, to halt any senseless violence before it began.

"Creators," Sagan spoke to Iroa and Kraana, "a tactical retreat is recommended for your forces. Your objective is unobtainable. We do not wish for there to be bloodshed. Depart at once."

Distraught, Iroa became more agitated as he tried to scan between the synthetic ranks for his daughter, now hidden in the crowd with me.

"Nyareth!" he called pathetically. "Nyareth!"

I held Nya's arm tighter against me, a snarl coming to my lips. Nya stayed silent though, not keen on giving her father any shred of satisfaction.

Despite the overwhelming odds, Kraana stepped forward as she leveled the barrel of her rifle directly at Sagan's chest.

"Do you take us for simpletons?" she hissed at the geth. "You'll kill us all anyway."

Sagan slowly shook his head, mimicking the gesture he had seen repeated in organics.

" _No_. We will not."

"Such an obvious lie," Kraana sneered.

"Geth do not lie. Our future is tied with our Creators. There is no need for conflict. Cease and desist aggression."

"I'd rather die than acquiesce to a geth."

"Your viewpoint is outdated and ultimately baseless," Sagan said evenly. You had to admire the fortitude of a synthetic; an organic would already be fighting to control their temper right now. I know I would have already clocked Kraana given the chance. "We do not wish harm upon anyone. Geth no longer have any need for aggression. However, you arrived here _specifically_ with the objective to cause harm. We will not allow that in this place. Depart… or cooperate."

Kraana hunched her body down a bit as she inched forward ever so slowly. "And I don't suppose you'd be willing to turn Nyareth over to our custody peacefully, then? I mean, if you don't want any bloodshed…"

"Creator McLeod has repeatedly stated her desire to remain separate from you," Sagan cut Kraana off with what I assumed was the geth equivalent of a snarl. Protective and succinct. "We will respect her wishes. If you attempt to forcibly remove her, you will find such an endeavor ineffective… Creator _Nedas_."

If there had not been a visor over Kraana's face, I would have been able to see her skin go completely and totally white in shock. She lurched a bit as she struggled to form words, eyes growing wider by the second.

"Wh-What… did you just dare… to call _me?_ " she uttered chokingly.

"Creator Nedas. You are Kraana'Kannos vas Nedas nar Tasi. Crew of nowhere. Child of no-one. Your name has been stricken from the records of every ship you served on due to a violent liaison you had with the daughter of a Creator admiral. You remain forgotten to your people, your original name lost. You have no claim to Creator McLeod. She is not your progeny. You cannot take her. She will only receive pain if she follows you out of the enmity you harbor for her. Based on the empirical evidence we have obtained, we have determined that Creator McLeod is already in safe hands with her chosen husband, a type of bond that you have failed to replicate yourself and have possibly never obtained before. Such a connection is inaccessible for you to create, but we will help to protect that which you threaten to destroy."

Whether Sagan had known where the right pressure point to prod on Kraana was or not, his declaration had a paralytic effect on the woman. Cut to the bone, it was apparent that Kraana was blanching right in front of everyone as her pride had been torn to shreds in seconds. It almost looked like she was going to turn on her heel and leave at that.

But Kraana then fired two shots directly into Sagan's torso.

The air became thick with the horrified shouts from me, Nya, and Iroa, in addition to the scattered bursts the quarians caused as they began to open fire into the crowd of geth. While that was occurring, Sagan toppled to the ground, almost in slow-motion. The yellow geth's optics were hazily flickering in and out of existence, but for some reason, I could see that Sagan's armor was completely intact and not shattered from the bullets impacting into it at point-blank range. It seemed almost unbelievable, until…

Disruptor rounds. Kraana was only looking to disable Sagan, not to kill him outright. Whatever for remained a mystery, but now two other quarians were busy helping to heft the geth out of the facility while Kraana and Iroa finally started to beat feet towards the exit, the latter struggling in the grip of his wife.

I should have known that Kraana was not going to accept walking away empty-handed. Iroa I knew was going to take some convincing, but Kraana? I never even saw it coming. It figures that after enduring multiple attempts at her husband desperately trying to convert his daughter over to his side, Kraana was feeling rather burned at the fact that she was not exactly receiving anything particularly noteworthy out of this endeavor. If Nya was not going to come along, then a fully functioning specimen of an above-average geth hardware platform would certainly do. Maybe she figured that Sagan would make a good bargaining chip. Such a prize would definitely enable her an effective 'get-out-of-jail-free' card to whomever she chose to present it to, be it the Admiralty or back to the Loyalists. All would be forgiven if she turned over such a valuable piece of technology and Kraana would get to roam free.

Just the thought of such a despicable character like Kraana being able to walk freely, wherever she wanted, filled me to no end with the kind of anger that was comprised of pure filth – nearly vomit-inducing. Ignoring protests from Nya, I slowly got to my feet, crowbar in hand, and shouldered a few geth aside as I made my way to the entrance.

"Samuel!" the geth called after me in unison. "Samuel! Stop!"

While all that was going on, the remainder of the quarians that were standing there ground were going through something of a mad minute. They were firing into the geth crowd indiscriminately, but their shots went wild, unfocused. They had been too frazzled to even think of utilizing disruptor rounds as an effective attack, so their shots merely pushed the geth back a bit like they were only being punched in the chest, their shields holding nicely and taking the brunt of the bullets.

For a moment, I was worried that I was about to witness another massacre in front of my eyes. There was no way that the quarians could withstand a geth assault of this magnitude – they were going to be slaughtered. If Iroa and Kraana managed to escape, they would be able to craft their own narrative about how reactivated geth were wiping out quarians again. It would mean another Morning War, one that could see the remaining geth population wiped out for good.

But all my expectations would be thrown out the window as the geth soon proved that all of them had the ability to surprise me.

Instead of going for their weapons as the first line of defense and mowing all the quarians down in true cold-blooded fashion, the geth merely discarded all firearms the closer they got to their creators. They then sprang forward, unencumbered, and swung their powerful arms so that they knocked the guns out of the quarians' hands.

Rifles and handguns of all shapes and sizes flew into the air as quarian after quarian found themselves abruptly disarmed. Fresh geth bounded in and bodily lifted the terrified aliens up off the ground, but they were gentle enough as not to even cause any broken bones. Keen to mop up this skirmish as quickly and cleanly as possible, the geth moved the quarians to the sides of the solid machinery, pinning them against the thick metal so that they would not be a nuisance to anyone else. Little by little, the stream of firing ebbed out as each quarian became restrained by their creations. They struggled in the grip of the synthetics, some yowling in terror, many of them thinking that they were going to be killed. I knew better; if the geth wanted them dead, they would have done so by now. This was merely the final piece of proof demonstrating the placidity of the geth's true nature.

Though it would all be for naught if I allowed Kraana to leave with Sagan, carrying her distorted truth with her. The political ramifications were secondary – Sagan was my friend, and my sole purpose now that burned within me was to make sure that Kraana's hands would not hold onto him anymore.

There were still a few marines in my way that were trying their best (and failing) to thin out the crowd of geth. I barreled them over with a couple swings of the crowbar. They fell, never even having seen the blows coming. With the way reasonably clear, I pushed past the remainder of the contingent and hurried to the exit, but I was unable to spot Kraana or Iroa anywhere in sight. I swore, infuriated beyond belief that they had managed to secure a getaway. This was not how things were supposed to go!

With a final, scratchy burst, the gunfire finally died out after lingering amongst the cavernous walls a few seconds longer. The geth had finally subdued the remaining quarian resistance. Their prisoners struggled in the grip of the synthetics, but it was no use trying to compete with artificial muscle strands. With their superior strength, the geth easily herded their creators gently yet firmly over to the center near the exit door. Simultaneously, each geth that held a quarian released their grip on their hostages, allowing them to cluster up in relative safety.

The quarians still looked petrified, uneasy, even though that no one had been killed in the effort. Some were shaking so hard now that they were face to face with their former archenemies that they looked about ready to collapse in bits, still not entirely gripping the concept that the conflict between them had long ended years ago. One such woman even fell to her knees and vomited inside her helmet, totally freaked out of her mind. Very strange – they all believed that the geth were going to execute them sooner or later yet they failed to comprehend that the mind of a synthetic would not allow for such a lull in the fighting if they truly wanted to kill them. That's not how a geth works; decisions for them were binary: they either were going to spare them or murder them all, not take time to savor the moment. Since the geth had no desire to spill blood, the end result was the former. Yet the quarians, as a result of the centuries of fear-mongering and prejudice, still operated under the belief that the geth were simply toying with them before they became the boogeymen incarnate, completely blind to the fact that they were in not in any sort of danger whatsoever.

Hell, they should be more worried of me than of them. Compared to the geth, I was a rabid animal, keen to snap at anyone who was foolish enough to test me.

An idea coming to mind, I activated my omni-tool and used the device's GPS systems to locate Kraana's own tool – which was easily discernable due to its relative proximity. It was a simple affair to obtain her address, input it into my own tool, and open a channel between the two lines.

The sultry and unpleasant female tone sounded less than pleased when she no doubt realized who was barreling through the voice protocols.

" _What the hell do you want, human?_ "

Reflexively, I curled my lip in disgust, fighting the urge to scream my demands. "Look, Kraana. I'm going to be rather blunt with you here. You've lost. All your troops have surrendered. Didn't even fell a single geth, I might add. With that in mind, I'm willing to bargain with you."

" _Bargain? Bargain for what?_ "

"Don't be stupid with me!" I snarled into my tool as Nya came up by my side, her expression worried. "We both have something the each other wants. You have Sagan, I have your crew. I want him back and in return I will let your followers free. You're never going to get that good of a deal for the rest of your natural life, but I want my answer _now_. Yes or no?"

" _An enticing offer_ ," the voice on the other end mused. " _This geth is really worth something to you, isn't it? I'm now wondering how far you would be willing to go in order to get it back._ "

I glanced over at the crowd of quarians currently cowed before the geth that formed a semicircle around them.

"So you think that the lives of twelve of your own crew won't cut it?"

" _I'm merely testing the waters. It's almost adorable, how you've been corrupted by the geth's so-called logical way of thinking. I'm more curious as to why you would give away the lives of twelve souls for one synthetic. The odds don't seem to add up, no?_ "

"I'm not playing this game with you, Kraana," I gritted my teeth as my finger bones popped within a clenched fist. "I want an answer right now."

Kraana paused for a moment as if she was deciding whether to provoke me some more or to actually cooperate for once in her life.

" _My crew… they are all still alive?"_

Heart rate starting to slow back down to normal, I mustered a tight breath. "Some a little banged up, but yes. They are all still alive."

The sigh on the other end was not the sort of response I had been expecting.

" _What a pity_."

A string of high-pitched beeping noises immediately began to emanate from inside the room. Nya and I looked up in shock, trying to locate the source of the noise before the frantic squirming of the quarian captives drew our attention.

My heart went to my throat.

Tiny yellow diodes, as bright as the sun, were fluttering in rapid fashion upon each of the quarians' chests. The yellow color grew hotter and hotter, from the sunflower yellow to a rusty orange, and finally to a lava red. Many of the quarians scrambled their hands upon the diodes, like they were trying to tear them off their enviro-suits. Their movements only became more and more fraught with panic and several began to emit screams of genuine alarm, their voices cracking in hysterics.

Dumbly, I took a step forward.

But it was over before I even had a chance to do anything.

Multiple flashes went off at the same time after one last collective shout from the group. A brief blossom of fire existed for a nanosecond, engulfing the quarians with a thunderous explosion that deafened my ears. Smoke quickly replaced the flames and soon dissipated to reveal a horrifying sight.

Whereas the quarians had been previously been standing together, clumped in a rough circle, they were now all crumpled upon the ground, their bodies ravaged and torn open. Cordite hung in the air, thick on the tongue. Blood spattered the ground, already half dried from the heat of the explosive devices embedded into each enviro-suit.

Nya cried out as she too beheld her fallen countrymen. I gave an agonizing keen as I fell to the ground, overwhelmed in the wake of such senseless violence, and smashed a fist into the ground hard. The pain did not matter – I was already hurting. Fresh tears sprung up upon my eyes and I shut them, unwilling to believe that I was staring at a collection of cooling corpses. Why? These people had been my enemies, but that did not meant that they deserved to die! They had been alive, dammit! What was even the point?!

"How _could_ you?" I mustered out through my labored breathing. " _How could you?_ "

" _Ah, it worked then_ ," Kraana said in a breezing and ultimately inappropriate manner. " _But as to your question, it was necessary. You think that I would be willing to put my faith in anyone who would surrender to their enemies instead of fighting to the death? No, I am not so stupid as to limit myself to the pathetic cowards that I had to scrape up. Which is why I planted a little extra insurance to motivate the troops. Apparently it failed to make a difference, given the end result. But now, you have no more bargaining chips, human. Such a shame. Since your position has now crumbled, I think that this geth will be coming with me. At least you will now get to live in relative peace with your wife. The less I see of her, the better, to be honest_."

My hand shot to within a centimeter of my face and every muscle in my body shook heavily as anger clenched at my heart.

"I swear to _fucking_ god," I seethed into the receiver, "the next time I lay eyes on you, I will blow your fucking head off. Listen well, you bitch, because I am going to come for you, and I am going to kill you. You get that?! You're de-,"

The line clicked unceremoniously. Line disconnected..

I gave a brutal growl of frustration. Damn that woman! So cocksure of herself, thinking she'd won. Did she really not believe my threats, or was this a taunt in an attempt to drive me into making a mistake? Iroa and Kraana truly deserved to be with each other, despite their now obvious disdain that had noticeably grown between them lately.

Behind me, the geth were silently and solemnly gathering up the bodies of the fallen quarians. They operated with gentle care, a kind of reverence that most of the galaxy could not attribute to them in their heads. It was almost as if you could detect the actual emotion of sorrow radiating from the cold circuitry of the synthetics. Astounding, to see that such strong feelings were not completely an organic attribute.

The geth treated the dead with respect, very much like they regretted the fact that they had perished for nothing. In a way, despite all that had occurred between them and their creators, they still loved them. They truly and deeply respected the quarians for the initial spark that gave rise to their independence and they carried the bodies away with far more affection and devotion than had ever been bestowed upon them before by Iroa or Kraana. If the dead could only know just how much they were cared for in their final moments, things could have ended up differently.

But my chance to make things right had not in any way been lost. I was not going to lie down and take this!

A hand then fiercely gripped around my forearm. "If you're thinking of doing something rash by yourself," Nya breathed as she stepped in front of me, "you're going to have to think again."

"Going to try to talk me out of this?" I grimaced.

"On the contrary," Nya shook her head. "I _already_ have a rash plan, but it's going to be difficult without your help."

"Really?" I smiled. "How rash are we talking, here?"

"Pretty rash. But nothing approaching unbelievable realms of stupidity."

"All for a geth? Don't you find that rather ironic?"

Nya shrugged. "Yeah, well…" she looked back at the dozens of geth assembled around the hub. All were staring straight at us, their gazes curious and expectant at the same time. "People can change."

"That they can," I affirmed as I squeezed Nya's shoulders gently. "So, what's this rash plan you've got cooked up?"

"Follow me and I'll show you." She now turned to face the geth crowd, looked from left to right for a second as she tried to find a gentle route through the synthetics before she placed her hands on her hips in puzzlement. "Could you all please allow us to pass to the door over there?" she called as she extended an arm, indicating the direction she wanted to travel.

Immediately, with a speed even beyond military precision, the geth moved all at once, stepping aside in one fluid motion to make a clear path perfectly towards the exit that Nya had previously pointed out. It was so fast that if I had blinked, I would have missed it. Impressed, I made a small noise of approval.

"Not bad," I murmured as Nya took my hand, quickly leading me through the multicolored crowd of armored metallic warriors. Each geth's head followed our path, almost as if they were proud of what we were doing, a silent blessing for the only living souls in their midst. It was hard not to feel awed at this point in time.

Even more so when Nya slid open the nearest door to reveal what was waiting beyond.

"Sagan showed it to me," Nya said proudly. "Thought me might have a use for it. He certainly did have a contingency for everything, I will admit."

Stepping forward into the room that housed the large object, hands at my side, I began to feel giddy as tiny tendrils of adrenaline snaked forth, reminding me that I still had some fight left within me.

"Not bad at all," I said again, teeth showing in a wide smile while my fists clenched viciously, eager to proceed.

* * *

 **A/N: After a much needed vacation, I'm back and ready to go. I loved my time in Germany - I was frankly astounded at how an entire country could be so beautiful. For anyone looking for a new vacation idea, take a look at Germany for it's pretty much got everything a tourist could ask for. I could have stayed there for months for it was so awesome. (Having beer for every meal was also a plus. If you love beer, pork, and bread, you're going to have a good culinary experience.)**

 **Three more chapters to go - the end's almost upon us!**

 **Crowbar (Foe Theme): "The Mutiny" and "Leap of Faith" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_. The heavy industrial tones from the specified pair of cues continue the gritty edge that has been prevalent in Kurzel's album thus far. It's an interesting listen out of context, but if I'm being honest, the film itself could have used a different approach.**

 **Geth Activation: "Rudest Bad Boy in Joburg" by Hans Zimmer and Andrew Kawczynski from the film _Chappie_. Zimmer's electronic-based soundtrack provides an obvious musical framework that represents the geth as a whole. The cue in particular is very aggressive and tonally dense - some of Zimmer's best work in years.**


	18. Chapter 18: We Were Falling Anyway

Damn, this thing sure could move!

The geth transport may have taken up the length of an eighteen-wheeler, but it accelerated as if it was a Formula 1 car on steroids. Whatever was under the hood of this thing, we managed to get up to 300 miles an hour in maybe a hair under six seconds. Suddenly a Porsche looked like a kid's toy when put into perspective. With performance specifications such as these, I nearly found myself having a blast holed up in a beast like this until the somberness of our mission bore down on me again.

We were going to get Sagan back. Synthetic or not, we weren't leaving _anyone_ behind!

The transport that Nya and I had "borrowed" was perhaps the most bizarre and alien looking creation that I had ever been in, and that's saying a lot, considering what I've been through. Defying all conventions and aesthetics, the geth ship looked like an oversized metal cocoon with little spindly arms placed on the undercarriage for some odd esoteric purpose. The body of the craft rippled and flexed, looking very much like one of those Geiger-esque mutations one would find lurking in the background of a horror film. Blue light flared out from four vents near the rear – eezo exhaust, just like what every large piece of equipment utilized in this universe. If you were to show me a picture of this monstrosity and I had I no prior context concerning the matter, I would never, not even in a million years, have guessed that it was a transport of some kind. That's how thrown I would have been, except for the fact that my mind was on more purposeful goals.

As the transport skimmed across the dusty Rannoch surface, I was shifting in my seat, trying to find the most comfortable position. Nothing was working. Big surprise, the geth had no use for such trivial comforts like cushions. Or windows, for that matter – physical or virtual. There was no clear windscreen for the driver to utilize any visual clues from the exterior. Nya was driving using only the instrumentation panel in front of her as her only guide for creating references through data about any oncoming obstacles that we might be seconds away from careening into. This was exactly the sort of setup that graced spaceships today, which was understandable, but I was skeptical of its utilization on a ground vehicle. There are many more things you have to watch out for in a short period of time while traveling on the ground compared to space. To not have windows here just seemed like an invitation for disaster.

I kept my trap shut at making any snide comments on the matter, because Nya seemed to be doing just fine with her settings and I also didn't want to jinx ourselves, even though I put little stock in such superstitions. Playful beliefs, I called them. Harmless reflexes out of habit.

I continued to twist and turn, my ass beginning to holler bloody murder after being pressed into such a stiff metal seat. Making things worse was the fact that geth contours don't really align well with that of a human's – nothing that would give proper lumbar support, at least. Nya too seemed to be shifting slightly in discomfort. Good thing that this transport hovered above the ground – one bad bump and we'd all be doomed. Who needs shock absorbers when your craft can levitate?

It would have been nice to have some windows here, I thought grumpily for the umpteenth time. It was the fact that I had no reference points for where we were that was making me so anxious. Even with Nya reassuring me that we were definitely headed in the right direction (she even showed me on the map where we were and where we were going to prove it) I still was not assuaged. Griping was useless as I was not the driver in this case, nor did I have the ability to drive such an infernal contraption.

I just had to live with my life right now. My bruised, battered, mangled life.

But not boring, I could concede, which had to be the lamest silver lining to my situation that I could conjure, but one has to seize any modicum of positivity when things are at their most dire.

"Just a few more minutes," Nya said from the front through clenched teeth before I could even ask. She was just as on edge as I was. "We're nearly there."

Nearly to Iroa's ship, was what she meant, but I understood her all the same. In the amount of time since we had escaped her father's shuttle, Iroa's men had to have fixed the damage to the engines that Sagan had previously caused before we broke out. It was the only assumption – quarians were mechanical geniuses; I would have been surprised if it took them more than a day to iron out all the kinks and bumps the shuttle had taken.

As far as rash plans go, this one at least had a hint of sanity to it. With Kraana and Iroa having left with Sagan in tow (having given up on hounding Nya and I specifically), there was literally nowhere else for them to go to except back to their ship that they had left standing all lonesome next to the cliff on the other side of the valley. It was simple logic: if they left, then we would lose out on our chance to get Sagan back. Getting there before they took off was our only option, plus it would give us time to come up with a more refined plan.

Except that we still had no clue as to how we going to accomplish any of our objectives once we were to get on site. Forget refining the plan, _forming_ the damn plan was going to be the problem!

Well, we weren't going to get anything done by standing around and twiddling our thumbs. At least we were moving, and at breakneck speed, thanks to whatever demonic engine was powering this transport. We could worry about the minutia later.

"Two minutes," Nya called out. She certainly seemed confident of our transit.

Wordlessly, I stood and stumbled over behind her chair. My wobbling within the craft was all in my head – the acceleration dampeners, even in this tin box, cut out any hints of motion and velocity, perhaps breaking a few laws of physics along the way. I placed a hand on Nya's shoulder, feeling her muscles tense underneath the suit.

"Nervous?" I asked, my voice coming out in a rasp.

She immediately shook her head, solely concentrating on driving. "No," she grimaced. "You?"

"Not in the slightest," I answered, which was the truth. I was way too furious at Iroa and Kraana for there to be any room in my head for another emotion to slip in. Fear would just have to queue up and wait. Images of me slamming a crowbar into each of their heads flashed in my brain rapidly, flooding me with the addictive high of confidence. These thoughts should have been disturbing to me, not helped by the fact that I was entertaining these ideas so much. For someone who claims to avoid violence as much as possible, it was shocking at how much of an inclination I had for the concept.

We're all violent at heart. Some of us can just control it better.

I looked at the dashboard to see what it was that Nya was using to navigate with and immediately became lost in a sea of symbols that made zero sense to me. It was not like the display was in a different language but apparently the geth utilized a system (probably rooted in some mathematical base) that corresponded to the transport's primary functions. Now I knew for sure that I could not operate this thing. Nya seemed to have no trouble, however. Maybe the geth utilized the digital characters from their quarian creators, I had no idea. Now I know how Nya felt whenever I tried to explain a ligament operation in detail: completely and totally lost.

On the bottom left corner, a foggy white dot was blipping calmly amongst a static indigo sea. Not one to remain clueless for long, I pointed at the little light. "What the heck is that supposed to be?"

Nya momentarily glanced at the blip in the middle of her piloting. "That's a communications indicator. We're… being hailed?" she said, confused.

"Hailed? By who?"

"I don't know," Nya shrugged. "Let's find out."

One of her limber fingers touched the glowing point, like it was a tangible atom with mass, and the telltale whirr of a channel being opened sounded before a silent audio vacuum greeted us for a few seconds. That is, until the person on the other line spoke.

" _Creator McLeod, it is apparent that you have located the indicated transportation_."

"Sagan?!" Nya and I asked in disbelief at the same time.

" _Affirmative_ ," the geth intoned, weirdly calm for a captive. Geth did not vary much with their emotions, admittedly.

Nya gave a quick look to make sure that she was not about to crash the craft into a rock pillar. "How the… Sagan, how are you talking to us right now? Where are you?"

"Are you all right?" I added in.

Sagan took all the questions one at a time, not even overloaded by the barrage of interrogatives. " _We remain operational. This platform has suffered superficial damage only. Extremity processes remain, at the moment, non-functional, though. We are currently still under the effects of the disruptor ammunition fired into our chassis and it will take around twenty-three minutes for these systems to fully reboot and recycle. The transport you are utilizing contains unique communication codes that have been preemptively stored in our memory banks and we are using a low-radiation microwave burst to broadcast, using the transport itself as a conduit. The range is limited but effective for our purposes._ " The geth paused a few seconds to let that sink in for us. " _As for our location, satellite coordinates appear to place us 4.4 kilometers away from Creator Kannos' shuttlecraft and closing at a rate of seven kilometers an hour. Their interest in your well-being has waned sufficiently, Creator McLeod. Your escape should be final at this moment._ "

Nya's hands gripped the controls more firmly. "Yeah, Sagan. We escaped. But not for much longer. We're less than a kilometer out from the shuttle as we speak. We'll beat Iroa there before he has a chance to get away."

There was a noticeable beat on the other line. Mere moments for us. An eternity for Sagan.

" _This… was not our intent_ ," the geth replied, sounding confused. " _We wished for you to utilize the transport to gain additional distance between you and your biological father, Creator McLeod. There is no need for you to put yourself in additional danger._ "

"The hell with that," I grimaced tightly.

"Not going to happen," Nya affirmed.

" _We do not understand_ ," Sagan had never sounded this helpless before, or this befuddled. " _We orchestrated this scenario for your protection. You must leave as your safety cannot be guaranteed. Why would you knowingly place yourself in this situation for this platform? To recover a captive geth?"_

This was as much of a short circuit as Sagan was ever going to receive. It was interesting to discover that, despite the geth's ambivalent attitude toward his creators for enacting a genocide on his synthetic comrades, Sagan had assumed that organics would always harbor some selfish tendencies that could not be fully overcome. It was the first time that I had witnessed Sagan miscalculate something. Perhaps it would be the last, perhaps not. But it strangely felt good to surprise someone in the best of ways, especially when the person you were surprising was entirely artificial.

I leaned to speak into the console more clearly. " _You_ were the one who protected us first, Sagan. _You_ helped us when you did not even have to. Consider this us returning the favor."

" _Our reasoning for harboring you was logical_ ," Sagan protested, tone still rather blank. " _You were in need of assistance. We were willing to provide assistance. You were willing to cooperate to achieve our mutual objectives. Offering protection to any ally was the only outcome obvious to us_."

"And what kind of allies would we be if we didn't try to rescue them from our enemies?"

" _A query_ ," Sagan said after considering my words. " _Would there be any additional logic we could provide if it could convince you to halt your plan, Samuel?_ "

"That's going to be a 'no,' Sagan," Nya quickly answered in my stead, her gaze triumphant.

It seemed like Sagan genuinely had no idea what to say. " _Human. Creator. Working to help geth. We will not forget this effort._ "

My god, was Sagan getting choked up?

Nya chuckled at that. "You're more organic than you let on, Sagan."

" _Thank you, Creator McLeod. Thank you, Samuel_."

Even if a synthetic technically did not have the capacity to display emotion, you could not have convinced me in that moment that Sagan did not sound touched.

"We'll all have a chance to thank each other in person," I said. "We'll see you soon, buddy."

" _Good luck_."

* * *

Nya managed to pilot the both of us to the shuttle's landing area without incident (even though I knew without a doubt that she could do it). Not bad for a craft without any windows. She had to park it a ways away from the actual ship to minimize the risk of detection, meaning that we had a bit of a walk ahead of us. After making sure that our tracks were fairly concealed, we wasted no time in hurrying over the parched ground to the shuttle, keen to board it before Iroa and Kraana arrived. From what Sagan had indicated to us, we had plenty of time to stow ourselves on board, but considering all that had happened to us on this planet, it was safe to say that we were not going to take any more chances.

Oddly, there were no guards stationed at the entrance to the ship, which meant that we could go up the landing ramp and board unimpeded. Either Iroa's little cadre had become too thinned out for such menial tasks, or Kraana had pretty much killed all of their allies back in the manufacturing hub. Bad for them. Good for us. Morbid way of thinking, but it was the truth.

It did occur to me that Eyzn could be lurking around any corner in this ship, seeing as he had not been present for the bloodbath earlier. After the physical altercations that I had shared with him, I would rather not run into him again if I had the choice, at least not right now.

I needn't have worried. There was no one patrolling the hallways of the shuttle either, yet another stroke of luck on our end. Nya and I softly stole throughout the grimy craft and quickly sidled through a random door on the lower level. We were now in a glorified storage closet of some sorts. Crates made out of a firm plastic material were stacked as high as the ceiling (not that impressive, considering that it was a low ceiling), and a few tarps sloppily covered a couple pallets and toolboxes. Non-essential equipment, it looked like. Basically there was no reason as to why anyone should want to venture inside this room, which in turn lowered our chances of detection.

Despite all that, we still crammed ourselves into a corner and threw a badly ripped tarp over our heads. It was not a foolproof disguise, but I think it was safe to say that no one should feel compelled to check over in this corner unless someone specifically knew that we were here. Iroa and Kraana still thought we were back inside the underground hub and we would rather keep it that way as long as possible. They had no idea that Sagan had stashed a few vehicles for our use, not to mention having completely and obliviously glossed over the fact that they had been so close to their ancestor databanks, perhaps the most valuable resource they could have ever hoped to stumble across on this planet and they had totally missed it.

If only they knew.

We sat scrunched together on the floor, tarp overhead with a few tears providing key bits of pure light into our darkened bubble. Nya cradled a shotgun in her lap and I kept brushing my fingers over a pistol that I had appropriated from Sagan's transport, now holstered. We hardly spoke for fear of getting discovered, but after fifteen minutes had passed, we were starting to get a little antsy.

"I want Kraana," Nya whispered out of the blue, her eyes straight and determined.

I didn't glance over at my wife, trying to reduce any noise. "You sure?"

"Positive. I need to pay that bitch back."

"Fine," I grimaced as my forearms unconsciously tensed. It was unlike Nya to be so venomous, to actively nurture a desire to harm a specific person out of anger. It would be worrying if I was not feeling the same way as well. "I'll take Eyzn then. I need to make sure that prick learned his lesson the last time. But if they so much as even touch Sagan, I'll rip them apart."

We did not even tout Iroa as an issue. It was probably an underestimation on our ends, but from what we had seen of the man, he was hardly the kind of person to put up a fight of any sorts. I knew that Nya could beat him into submission easily and that I could even break him in half if I was pushed too far. Kraana and Eyzn were the ones to worry about as we knew firsthand what they were truly capable of. They scared us, plain and simple.

"I think we're moving," Nya said as she looked at me.

I blinked. "How can you tell?"

" _Please_ ," she looked at me with scorn. "Quarian, remember? There's a subtle vibration in the craft. Feel it?"

I could not, but I nodded my head yes anyway.

"Liar. You can't feel it," Nya uttered flatly, calling me out. She then abruptly stood, ripping the tarp off of us and roughly discarding it to the side. "We're probably headed to the remainder of the Loyalist fleet in low orbit. If they link up with them, we're not going to be able to escape."

"Oh, _that's_ going to be fun."

"I know right?" Nya replied back, all snark. "Kraana's definitely going to be guarding Sagan. I find Sagan, I'll find Kraana."

"I'll head for the bridge, then," I said as I checked my pistol. "I can probably handle flying a crate like this for a short time while you find Sagan."

"You sure? Going to the bridge might get a little rough."

"I said I can handle it. Besides, we're going to need a plan to get us back on the ground. Having control of this vessel will be a decent start. Unless you'd want to try the escape pod method again…"

"Ugh, no way," Nya emphatically shook her head, recalling the quite uncomfortable sensations of being strapped into a metal box and bounced upon the ground like a ball. "What would be nice is some kind of distraction, though," she mused. "That way we could gain the upper hand by taking advantage of their flustered states. You could get to the bridge without much opposition and I could do the same with finding Sagan."

"Yeah, but what can we use as a distraction here? We're on a ship, probably in space by now, with nothing to-,"

My voice halted mid-way in my throat as it just hit me. I nearly laughed at the coincidental timing of it all, unable to stop the smile from spreading across my face. Nya could barely contain her chuckle as well as she in turn was probably grinning like a loon behind her visor, our brainwaves perfectly in sync.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she breathed giddily.

I could only sigh, but with a teasing edge applied to it. "Yes…" I said slowly. "I believe that I'm thinking what you're thinking. I must be _mad_ for going along with this, but…"

"Do you have a better plan?" Nya placed her hands on her hips, the question obviously rhetorical.

I barked a laugh, a bit louder this time. "This is crazy. This is _insane_. I can't believe we're about to do this."

"Do you want to save Sagan or not?"

"You're goddamn right I do, woman!" I scowled, but my tone was light. "I'm just wondering if I'm ever going to hear the end of this ridiculousness, though."

Nya lifted a finger to her ignited omni-tool, her programs barreling through the shuttle's firewalls in seconds. Within moments, she had access to every system on board the ship, but she overlooked the ones for the life support and engines, going for a system that ranked low on the list of importance, but was something that most of the civilized galaxy took for granted.

"It isn't ridiculous if it works," Nya pointed out.

"That's not stopping me from having a very bad feeling about this."

"Quiet," Nya shushed as she positioned her finger to the requisite button. "And get ready."

The virtual button blipped and gave a soft ping in response to the added pressure.

" _Artificial gravity is now disabled_ ," the shuttle's computer calmly intoned as panicked shouts began to resonate all around the craft in response to the rapid shift in environment.

The familiar sensation of queasiness started to rise up within me but I firmly gulped it down, fully expecting this outcome. Nya and I's boots gently lifted off from the floor, the tips barely skimming the metal ground, our faces contorted in concentration. We raised our arms so that we would not bonk our heads upon the ceiling, making the barest movements so that we would not be careening all over the place in zero-g.

Even through the shut door, the cries of alarm from the quarian crew were loudly apparent. No wonder, a sudden loss of gravity would probably make anyone panic, despite the fact that space had little gravity to begin with.

"This is certainly going to cause a ruckus," I said, surprising myself with how mild my voice was. I kept my body still as I hovered in place, all of my muscles relaxing as they were freed from the weighty presence of gravity upon them.

"More than you think," Nya dryly replied as she began to rotate upside down unintentionally. She still continued to talk like everything was normal. "I might have let the ship's firewalls in onto my system intrusion after I disabled the gravity. If it worked like it was supposed to, all users, even the registered ones, are now locked out for a good while. They'll have to fix the gravity manually at this point, which will take some time."

"Well, no time like the present," I reached out and grabbed Nya's leg, helping to reorient her so that she was floating "upright." In any other situation, we would be laughing at the comical nature of our surroundings. I certainly would like to be laughing. "You all set?"

"You know it."

"Excellent."

Yet as soon as we lined up to head through the door, the two of us recoiled in shock, as did the newcomer we unexpectedly found ourselves face-to-face with floating in the hallway. Ordinarily this would not have been so horrifying for us, except that this quarian's suit was wreathed in an electric-blue weave.

"Oh _shit_ ," I said out loud, my face blanking.

"You son of a bitch!" Eyzn similarly shouted as he pumped his shotgun, aiming it in our direction.

This would have meant the end of our journey, but I quickly moved without even allowing any time to ponder my actions. What I proceeded to do would ultimately save our lives.

At the very second I perceived that the muzzle of Eyzn's shotgun was pointed at me, my body seemed to react without even waiting for my brain to fully comprehend the situation. Thousands of years of evolution, of shared genetic experience, all screamed at my body to make the fateful move. Immediately, my arms shot out, gripped the barrel of the shotgun, and shunted it downward to point it away from us. Eyzn's finger was still on the trigger and my rough actions caused him to clench down upon it, filling the air with heat and noise.

Fire blossomed near my feet, but I miraculously did not flinch. My ears throbbed as the shotgun's explosion pounded against them again and again as they echoed off the walls. All sound ceased to register. I had been partially deafened.

Eyzn reared back as he yowled in pain, eyes clenched behind his visor. I was momentarily confused as to how he had managed to get himself hurt until I saw perfect red spheres start to float upwards towards the ceiling. Blood, tiny shimmering droplets of blood. I looked down and immediately understood.

The top of Eyzn's right foot was just… gone. Shot away from the shotgun blast when I had pushed the gun down. Blood, bits of boot, and chunks of flesh were all frantically spinning about in the weightless atmosphere, all spewing out from the grisly wound. I could see the shredded flesh hanging limply over shattered knobs of white bone, the limb shaking as Eyzn continued to scream, his shotgun lazily floating away back into the corridor.

As more of my wits returned to me, I felt inflated by a righteous rage. I reached out, grabbed Eyzn by the throat, perhaps a bit harder than I intended as I definitely felt something crush as my hand squeezed around his windpipe, and bodily hurled Eyzn to the other side of the room, the exertion made effortless with the lack of gravity. Eyzn left a floating trail of blood streams in his wake as he sailed through the air, the top of his helmet finally careening into the wall with a sickening crack.

Eyzn went limp.

" _Now_ we're even, you asshole!" I growled as I maneuvered over to his body, a raised fist prepared to slam into his head, but a hand quickly reached out and clamped over my wrist, preventing me from doing something I might regret.

I looked and saw Nya shaking her head at me. "He's no trouble to anyone right now," she breathed, her voice strangely audible through the thickening ringing in my ears. "Leave him."

It took a lot of effort for me not to obey my animal instincts and to just lay into Eyzn, crack his visor open, and leave him to die of an infection. But that was honestly not the sort of person I was. I had not fallen to that level yet. Even though I felt that I was making a big mistake and would come to rue this decision much later, I lowered my fist and backed off.

Watching through bleary eyes, Eyzn hacked a ragged cough. "You…" he started before he had to cough again. His voice sounded a lot rougher than before, scratchy and deep. I must have inadvertently damaged some of his vocal cords when I had temporarily strangled him. "You… should have… finished me off… when you-,"

Infuriated at his total lack of humility in addition to desperately wanting him to shut up, I concede that I did fall for Eyzn's goading, but not exactly in the way he might have expected.

Ordinarily, I would have settled for simply gagging the man, but since there was a visor in the way, I had to think of something else to dissuade Eyzn from opening his mouth and making a stupid comment. No longer looking to land a fatal blow, I decided on something a bit more simplistic. I grabbed Eyzn's left hand, his limp arm not even resisting, and forced his little finger far beyond its natural range of motion until I felt the bones snap cleanly in my grip.

Staring wildly at his ruined finger, not fully into shock yet from losing part of his foot, Eyzn yelled some more, his voice cracking wildly as it rapidly switched between ranges.

"You'll never learn," I sighed as I nudged Eyzn's writhing body over towards the corner with my foot. "Now be quiet."

It was fair to say that the quarian was out of commission, but with the foaming medi-gel sealing around his foot wound, Eyzn was going to live through this, sadly.

I turned to Nya, expecting to see her disappointed gaze stare mournfully at me through her reddened visor, but instead I found ambivalence. Odd considering that I had nearly put her stepbrother in a coma, but he was just like any stranger to her. Unworthy of her love. Family always comes first and Eyzn was not family. Not to us.

"One down, I guess," I muttered, lightly tapping on my ears to make the tinnitus more bearable.

"One down," Nya nodded. She then touched my cheek. "I'll go find Sagan."

"I'll get this ship under control."

"Be safe."

"Same with you."

We left in the room for Eyzn to contort in pain alone.

* * *

The absence of gravity had not annoyed Kraana all that much. She was used to various systems on this decrepit shuttle breaking every so often. It was more of the timing of the malfunction that caused her to be so upset – to finally leave that damned stepdaughter of hers along with that idiot human that she had taken for a mate only for this to occur! At least she was putting distance between her and Nyareth every second, she conceded.

Kraana floated above the operating room, begrudgingly thanking the ancestors that all the sharp instruments had not spun in all directions once the gravity had cut out. They stayed stationary on the cart, completely motionless while waiting for an outside force to act on them.

To the comatose figure strapped to the gurney in front of her, Kraana ran a hand along the smooth and shiny yellow armor of the geth. "You are certainly a magnificent specimen," she oozed, poison tinging her words. "Quite an extraordinary geth. You were not _completely_ designed by us, were you? So sleek… these advanced optics… no quarian made those."

Even though Sagan's freezing blue optics were free to move, the geth did not make any sound as he beheld the quarian in silence. This seemed to rattle Kraana even more as she reoriented herself back towards the floor, finding the zero-g environment more and more annoying as time went on.

"Not so talkative anymore, eh? Vocal processors damaged? Well, it was not like you were going to use them for very much longer anyway."

From the cart, Kraana very carefully plucked up a power saw rated for metal cutting. She toyed with the trigger a few times, the device emitting a harsh whine every time the sharp blade spooled up to the highest rotation. Kraana traced a line on Sagan's chest with her finger, indicating the sort of cut she was about to make. Opening up the geth would allow her access to its memory banks and although it would be more traumatic to the patient, it would provide Kraana an easier route to whatever secrets Sagan had locked away.

She could hardly wait.

Kraana lowered the saw down gently, inch by inch. She held her breath as the razor-sharp teeth closed the gap upon the yellow armor. She anticipated the bite, the squeal, and the spray of sparks.

What she did not anticipate was the familiar _ka-CHUNK_ sound of a shotgun being primed.

Kraana looked up and was immediately convinced that she was hallucinating. Nya was standing (technically floating, same as her) in this very room, having snuck in without Kraana knowing at first, her eyes completely boiling with rage as she fixated a shotgun at Kraana's head. Nya's chest puffed out slowly and deliberately as she tried to control her urge to blow her stepmother's head off right here and now, knowing just how dangerous she was.

Still holding the saw, Kraana narrowed her eyes in fury. " _You_ ," she hissed.

"You were expecting someone else?" Nya similarly fumed, her knuckles clenched tightly upon the weapon's stock.

Kraana's hand began to tremble wildly as she continued to heft the power tool. "You are incredibly skilled in aggravating me to no end. We gave you what you wanted! We left you alone! Why do you continue to persist in my life?!"

"Because you took something that didn't belong to you," Nya said quietly as she lined up Kraana's head on the sights of her gun. "Drop the saw and step away from Sagan."

"Sagan? You mean the geth? You've given it a _name?_ "

"Drop it. Now." Nya was evidently not in the mood for stalling.

Kraana slowly glanced at the tool she continued to hold before she turned back to Nya. "Of course. My apologies."

The very nature of the spoken words was enough to raise Nya's suspicions but she never got the time to react to them as Kraana quickly deactivated the saw's dead-man switch and hurled the rotating device at Nya's head. The saw sped through the air, straight and true, unimpeded by gravity weighing it down. Nya gave a yelp as the whirring blade rushed at her and, at the last second, she raised her shotgun to ward off the wayward tool, sending sparks flying into the air as the metal bit into the polymer stock. The saw rebounded away, but waves of heat bled out from one of the shotgun's torn dispersion hoses. The weapon died in Nya's hands and she was forced to let it go, to tumble away into weightlessness.

Kraana continued to rasp as she yanked a wicked looking hunting knife from the holster at her belt. Both of their attentions still kept the activated saw in mind as it kept turning about, the blade dangerously whirring and looking to claw into anything within reach.

Nya quickly moved to put the gurney containing the strapped-down Sagan between her and her knife-wielding stepmother. Kraana laughed, a crazed noise, as she nimbly rotated the hilt of the long blade between her fingers.

"I think I'm going to enjoy dissecting _you_ even more," she simpered, eyes lidded upward in a sneer. She jerked to the left, but Nya also moved to the left, the two now circling around Sagan, not daring to take their eyes off the other.

"You are out of your mind!" Nya roared, shifting between total disbelief and outrage.

"I'll take that into consideration."

With a frightful scream, Kraana launched herself over the gurney, right at Nya. She took a swing at the younger quarian's head, but Nya ducked out of the way just in time. Kraana clumsily smashed into an instrument shelf on the opposite wall, but she shook her head savagely and growled before leaping off again. Once more she collided with the wall, but just like before, Kraana quickly recovered only to repeat the process of savagely diving at Nya, yearning to tear out her entrails.

On the defensive, Nya frantically pushed off from surface to surface, desperately trying to stay out of Kraana's reach. She knew that if she made one sloppy mistake, if she hesitated at a crucial second, Kraana would kill her. The now rabid older woman was practically clawing at any surface she could find purchase upon, nothing but murder in her eyes.

All the while, the saw whirred in the midst of the clash, creating an obstacle for the two to avoid. Nya had to duck several times and maneuver her body in awkward poses so that she could avoid getting torn to pieces by the sharp metal. Kraana too made an effort to dodge the wayward saw, but it was after Nya paused for too long as she struggled to get away from both her stepmother and the saw did Kraana finally strike.

Nya looked, too late to react as the snow-white visor of Kraana took up her entire world. The two quarians collided against one another with a cry, spinning uncontrollably in a tangled mass of limbs. Swiftly, Nya grabbed at Kraana's wrist, the one holding the knife, and pushed with all her strength to get the blade away from her. The snarling Kraana writhed furiously and soon also grabbed at her knife with both hands, pushing it downward so that she could plunge the blade deep into Nya's heart.

The smile that Kraana made could have frozen a sun if it had been visible. "I didn't know just how much I missed this. Watching the fear take hold. Feeling it radiate off you. It's… intoxicating. It's… well, you already know the last time this happened for me. Just give up. It will be over soon. Why continue to struggle against the inevitable, dear?"

The glittering point of the knife softly teased the surface of Nya's enviro-suit, jittering slightly as the two quarians pushed against each other. The black blade very slowly tore into the rubbery material, creating a ragged line, but it did not puncture the suit outright. A horrified Nya looked up and down, her chest puffing up and down wildly as her noises increased in her panicked state. Kraana hissed again as she prepared one last surge of energy, awaiting the geyser of blood once the knife found Nya's skin.

But Nya found her energy first.

"Because I'm better than _you_ , rapist!" she screamed as her hand lunged out, only to swing back with the still-activated saw rapidly gyrating its blurred dance, having safely plucked it from its trajectory in midair.

Kraana looked up at the perfect moment to see a thin steel line bearing down on her before the saw blade hit her visor perfectly. She howled in panic and fear as sparks and dust spewed into the air, the serrated blade cutting into the thickened glass and metal of her helmet. There was a high-pitched squeal and the saw jerked violently in Nya's grip. There was a cracking noise and with a final shriek, Kraana finally disengaged away from Nya, propelling herself to the opposite end of the room.

Coughing gratefully, Nya righted herself while Kraana pulled a hand away from her head. The older woman appraised Nya fearfully, her once confident stance now meek and hunched, slightly trembling. Nya held the saw in front of her as she caught her breath, displaying the dangerous instrument menacingly, like she had been using such a tool for years.

The saw had not breached Kraana's suit, but it had certainly done some significant damage. There was a jagged line upon the metal of Kraana's helmet, just on the right side where the steel teeth had bitten into it. Even part of Kraana's hood had not been spared as some of the fabric had been cleanly sheared, flapping about in the topsy-turvy environment.

But where the most devastation had been incurred was Kraana's visor. The rightmost part of the white covering was now heavily spiderwebbed in a litany of thick cracks, some of them still continuing to splinter like a frozen lake. None of the cracks were deep enough to leak precious atmosphere, but both women knew that such an occurrence was a critical weak point for a quarian's suit.

With a shaking hand, Kraana gingerly traced the cracks upon her visor, her fingers eventually making their way to the torn gash in her helmet, to the ripped fabric of her hood. With nary a word, Kraana's inhalations began to grow more animalistic, her movements more jerky, and ever so slowly she began to float towards Nya again, uncaring that she was bringing a knife against a power saw, but nothing else mattered to her except to see Nya disemboweled at her feet.

"Brave little slut, huh?" Kraana panted viciously as she tightly clutched her knife. "I think I might just take your head for that."

"You will not," a voice that was not Nya's boomed.

With a tearing of fabric, a three fingered hand, wrapped in yellow armor, shot up from where it had been lying upon the bench. The hand quickly clenched itself around Kraana's wrist, tightening in an instant, creating a series of harsh snapping noises as the bones of the quarian's wrist snapped. Kraana's fingers instinctively sprung open in response to the pain, allowing the knife to float lazily away.

More straps ripped and were flung away as Sagan sat upright, his optics coldly fixated upon Kraana's aghast eyes. "You were warned," the geth spoke with authority. "Violence against Creator McLeod is inadvisable."

"Move out of the way, Sagan," Nya spoke in flat tone.

The geth glanced over and partially shifted aside as Nya now headed for her trapped stepmother. Tossing the saw away, she grabbed Kraana's delinquent knife in exchange before she now grabbed the woman's ruined wrist so that she could push it against the wall.

Kraana, trying to breathe through the pain, was about to wheeze a taunt only to find out that her words would arrive too late. With a growl, Nya swung the knife, stabbing it through the silence.

Bone crunched. Flesh tore. Blood bubbled. Kraana screeched.

When Nya finally backed away, she savored the breath of relief afforded to her. Kraana was moaning pitifully as she stared at her hand – now pinned between the knife and the wall. Nya had been both surgical and brutal with her strike. The blade had impacted dead center upon Kraana's palm, doing irreparable damage as bone had been punched aside, tendons ripped beyond repair, the metal biting into skin as Kraana continued to jerk helplessly in response to the pain. The woman's fingers spasmed, unable to fully clench anymore. Kraana gave a fruitless effort to pry the knife out of the wound, but it was either too painful for her to accomplish or Nya had really sunk the blade deep into the wall beyond.

Wiping away the droplets of blood that impacted upon her visor, Nya stared dispassionately at the trapped Kraana, who was now beginning to weep from agony, frustration, or embarrassment. It really must have been painful, having a knife speared through your hand in addition to a crushed wrist. Nya found it pathetic, watching this grown woman start to bawl, but that did not absolve Kraana from the atrocities she had committed in the past.

Nothing she could do or say would be of any help.

Grunting hopelessly, Kraana finally gave up trying to free herself and her stare was a silent beg for Nya to do… _something_. Anything other than _stand there_.

"Just finish me, you _bitch!_ " she tearfully howled at Nya. "It's what you wanted, isn't it? Go on, get it over with. Kill me!"

Nya did not move for several seconds. Behind that visor of hers, turmoil was occurring. There Kraana was, trapped and defenseless, begging for her life to end. There would never be a more perfect opportunity than this. She was right, it _was_ what she wanted. This woman had ruined lives and would ruin many more if she continued to live. And she had just blurted out her desire to die, granting absolution if she were to follow through with the act.

It was certainly a tempting offer.

Wordlessly, Nya maneuvered over so that she could retrieve the saw that she had previously discarded, now safely switched off. She noted that Kraana became more agitated as she took in the sight of Nya with the saw. No, not like this, the older woman seemed to convey. She didn't want to die like this – from a saw! For Nya to turn the saw onto her was beyond brutality – it was barbarous, vulgar, pure sadism. Had this reservoir of wickedness been present within her stepdaughter this entire time?

Nya moved so that the unmoving blade was millimeters away from Kraana's cracked visor, the roughened edges glistening eagerly. Quietly sobbing, Kraana leaned her head away as much as possible, trying to forestall the inevitable, already anticipating the torturous scratching of metal clawing at flesh, her blood to paint the walls beyond.

But the saw did not spool up. Instead, Nya moved in closer, a lump in her throat, her eyes holding no remorse.

As softly as she could muster, she fiercely whispered to Kraana, "I will _never_ be like you."

Eyes watering, mouth weeping, Kraana shut her eyes for the savage blow but met only confusion as the back end of the saw slammed into the top of her helmet, staggering the woman in place. Instead of the precise cut she had been fearing, this rough blow was the exact opposite kind of force that had been expected.

Kraana's vision doubled just in time to watch Nya savagely discard the saw away through the air, never to be activated again. Between the wounds that had been inflicted upon her and the knowledge that Nya had no intention to kill her finally took its toll on the battered woman as she realized that she would continue to live throughout the day.

She fainted.

As she watched Kraana slump in place, passed out, Nya emitted a wonderful sigh as she sagged backwards against the taller form of Sagan, who supported her protectively.

Nya reached over and held Sagan's hand gratefully. "Did she hurt you?"

"No," was the geth's calm reply. "We have accumulated no lasting damage. Have you been injured, Creator McLeod?"

"Just bumps and bruises," Nya muttered. "I'll heal."

As Nya turned around, Sagan's minor optics made a full rotation around his major lens, both focusing and refocusing in response to the new data available.

"Your actions today will never be forgotten," Sagan said, as awed as a geth could sound. "All geth will know of what you did for us. A lasting peace between geth and Creators may yet be attainable."

"It won't matter much if we can't get this ship to safety," Nya said grimly.

"Is obtaining control of the vessel the objective Samuel is currently pursuing?"

"Yes, he is."

If Sagan had the ability to smile, now would have been the perfect time.

"Then you have no need to worry."

Nya politely chuckled and shook her head. "I have all the confidence in my husband, but _you're_ not at all scared, Sagan?"

Sagan just stared placidly at Nya.

"Oh right," Nya chastised herself. "Dumb question."

* * *

"Stop!" a quarian cried as I shot down the hallway like a bullet out of a gun.

Needless to say, I didn't.

The blow from my pistol's stock struck the quarian perfectly where his jaw was upon his helmet. He recoiled viciously and spun away in a daze, the last guard between me and the bridge.

There were two more quarians manning their stations at the shuttle's helm. Beyond, through the projected virtual environment (again, there were no windows) I could see the bright and luminous orb of Rannoch overwhelming the surrounding scape of stars and gas clusters, a few wisps of atmosphere gently leaking out into the dark void. I wasted no time in assimilating the quarians' positions. Using the zero-g to my advantage, I quickly maneuvered my body so that my feet were facing in the direction of the closest alien. A hefty kick propelled one quarian through their virtual instrument panel, crashing his head against the desk projectors and causing a litany of exclamation point icons to blip up and down in response to the violent intrusion.

The other quarian was trying to get his own pistol out but was having trouble extricating it from its holster. The frenzied confusion ultimately cost him as I swung the butt of my pistol and impacted it upon the side of the quarian's helmet, making him cry out in pain and completely levelling him out of his chair.

Peace and quiet at last.

I stood over the control panel, acquainting myself with the instruments for a bit. Luckily, I was not too in over my head. The controls themselves were not all dissimilar from my own ship and most of these processes were automated. All I had to do, pretty much, was indicate the type of maneuver I wanted this thing to accomplish and the shuttle would do the bulk of the work for me.

I was midway through the process of inputting the quarian capital city as the ship's next landing site until a precise tapping of knuckles upon a door indicated to me that I was not entirely alone.

Very slowly, the skin on the back of my neck prickling, I turned.

"I thought I might run into you sooner or later," I said through dry lips.

"Observant of you," Iroa muttered, a pistol lined up in his hands. "What are you doing, Sam?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting this thing back down to the ground, that's what."

"You're nothing if not tenacious, but do you really think that I'm going to let you do that?"

I gave a dramatic glance towards the ceiling as I mustered a laugh. "You and what army? You've got no more followers. Your stepson's all fucked up somewhere on the bottom level. Your batshit crazy wife has been taken care of, from what I've been hearing. I'm not very keen on being used as a bargaining chip, so you _may_ stop me here, but Nya or Sagan will finish my job for me if it comes to that. So, yeah, _I_ might not get this thing down, but you're not going to be able to hold off all three of us."

Iroa shuddered, his eyes starting to waver. "I've come so far…"

"You only thought you made this much progress. There is still so much more you can lose. Step aside, Iroa. Let's end this once and for all."

The quarian trembled, his finger gliding over to the trigger, but retreating after a few seconds. This subtle gesture repeated itself a couple times as Iroa had to look down for himself, wavering on where he stood on the matter.

"I…" he mustered, his voice rough. "I… can't…"

I honestly have no idea what my next reaction would have been. I either would have let loose a scathing remark, or would have brazenly taken my chances by instigating a brawl with Iroa right then and there, hoping that I could somehow gain the edge before he could conceivably unload a round into my chest. Those two would have been the most likely outcomes had a piercing warning alarm not erupted from the pilot's console.

" _Warning! Warning! Catastrophic engine failure!"_

A holographic representation of one of the shuttle's engines automatically and immediately enlarged on the dais. Red sections of the engine were flaring up all over the place in response to the detected malfunction, indicating that the equipment really was in a state of total and complete failure.

I already knew which engine on the shuttle was the issue before the computer even blurted it out. Apparently the quarians had not fixed all the damage from Sagan's previous assault earlier today when the geth had blown most of it to smithereens in an effort to delay our capture. This marked the first moment that I could recall that I was let down by the so-called legendary technical aptitude of the quarians. It was just too bad that I had to be on the ship when the shit started to hit the fan.

" _Artificial gravity activated_ ," the computer said smoothly, oblivious to the danger.

Iroa and I were thrown to the ground at the same time, each emitting a loud cough as our lungs reverberated against our ribs. The impact dislodged Iroa's pistol from his hand and it slid underneath the seat, out of reach.

" _Sam!_ " I heard Nya cry out from my omni-tool. She sounded pretty shaken. " _The ship is falling apart! The electrical systems are going haywire! All ship functions are being totally overworked! We need to… argh! I-,_ "

" _Artificial gravity disabled_ ," the ship spoke again.

Once more I rose from the ground, levitating away from the floor as if strings were pulling on my body. Below me, I could see the instrument panels indicating that the shuttle was starting to list, proceeding on an uncontrolled descent back down to the planet. The entire chassis began to shake and shudder as waves of atmosphere began to slam into it. Already I could tell that my time in zero-g was not going to last for much longer. The closer we zoomed toward the planet, the more my body began to descend back to the ground.

Iroa and I, suspended for the time being, glanced up at each other. We both knew what was going to come next.

In that instant, we rushed toward the other.

This fight was unlike anything I've ever been in before. The complete shifts in perspective were overwhelming to the point of driving me catatonic. The bridge turned upside down over and over and over again as we whaled on each other in the near lack of gravity. We became one mass, tangled in each other's fists as we frantically hit anything within reach. Our constantly shifting momentum sent us in all directions; my back smashed against the wall at some point and Iroa's arm was bounced painfully off of a bulkhead.

Nowhere was safe. Any part of our bodies was far game – the blows kept raining down. I kept taking as much as I could give. We screamed, roared, bellowed as we slammed bone against bone, flattening skin, bursting blood vessels. Our fingers tore at the other, grabbed, choked. As we continued to spin in midair, our orientation eventually became forgotten as we set ourselves towards ripping the other apart with our bare hands.

Iroa wound up his arm and hurled a roundhouse towards my head, the intention clearly murderous. I dodged the blow by pressing myself more against his body, using the temporary advantage to lay a hammer blow to the quarian's ribcage. When Iroa doubled over, I grabbed at his helmeted head and dashed him against a nearby wall, hoping to stun him into yielding. However, his foot lashed out and caught me in the side, tearing us momentarily apart.

" _Collision warning! Collision warning!_ " the computer continued to sound, the ship still pitching down toward the planet.

"Reap what you sow, Iroa," I grimaced, my entire body bracing against the wall.

Iroa shook his head savagely as he clutched his arm. "It doesn't matter anymore. We're all going to die now."

"All thanks to you."

I made a frantic grab for purchase upon the wall behind me while the alarm continued to wail the time to impact. Iroa made a panicked noise as he scrambled for safety, but I was strangely calm as all my senses became overloaded by the images, vibrations, and sounds that furiously assaulted me. My breathing slowed to a crawl and I was miraculously able to take a slow blink, but I kept my eyes shut.

I did not look at the shuttle's progress to the ground. I tried not to listen to how many seconds were left until we were going to crash. Everything within me just… froze. My only regret was that I could not spend this moment with Nya next to me, but fortunately I did not have long to linger upon that regret.

There was a horrific thump and my grip was suddenly wrenched away from the wall as an invisible hand flung me across the room. My stomach lurched as it now felt like I was sailing through the air, the wind blowing at my hair. My limbs flailed, eager for connection and my mouth opened in a soundless scream.

Something touched the side of my head and the silence became absolute.

* * *

I eventually came to from the sound of rushing water.

Beating back the blurry murk that threatened to blind me, I sat up with a start. This rewarded me with a fierce pounding of an approaching headache. I groaned and clasped the area of my scalp that hurt the most and my fingers came away sticky with blood.

Fuck. Concussion, perhaps. Being unconscious, even for a brief period of time, was not a good thing. I was not looking forward to the hospital visit that this was going to incur.

I had bigger things to worry about though, because the next thing that I felt was a cold liquid sensation starting to lap at my legs. Water. Water was rushing into the bridge of the shuttle, pouring in crystal clear falls, churning up foam. Explained the source of the sound I had heard earlier. The ship smelled very quickly of salt, making my nose wrinkle.

That brought me into a state of alarm very quickly. The water level was rapidly rising within the bridge which meant that I had minutes at best until I was in danger of drowning. Frantically I searched high and low for an exit, finding the way I came in to be blocked by a dislodged locker. Finally I looked up and spotted a hatch bolted on the ceiling with red letters printed on it: "EMERGENCY AIRLOCK."

With a grunt, I lunged for the ladder underneath the hatch, my fingers slipping once upon the wet metal before finding purchase. Heaving myself up one rung at a time, fighting dizziness all the way, I made it to the hatch, the water frothing just a foot underneath my feet. Desperate, I reached up and grasped the hatch lever and yanked it downward, screaming as it took all of my strength to budge it.

There was a loud and satisfying _click_ and the entire lever thankfully shifted down. The explosive bolts on the outside detonated and the hatch flung itself into the air, letting bright and overwhelming sunlight pour into the hold, paralyzing me momentarily.

But then I lifted myself up into the light.

Cool ocean air smashed against me. I collapsed on the roof of the ship – a reprieve at last. However, I did not rest long as I slowly pushed myself back up, looking out onto the horizon for the first time.

It was no hallucination. There _was_ an ocean. An ocean as far as the eye could see, surrounding me on all sides. By some miracle, the shuttle had managed to crash land into one of Rannoch's tropic seas instead of smashing into the side of a mountain. That explained why I was still alive for the time being. This ship was barely able to stay afloat and there was nary a speck of land to be seen. The waters were calm, the skies clear and sunny (as evidence by how hot the ship's metal was getting), and there was barely a noise to be heard.

 _This is familiar. I've been here before… but something is… different. I was here. In my dream. Near an ocean. But on a beach. How… can this…_

 _No. Oh god… no…_

" _Nya!_ " I bellowed as I struggled to stand atop the partially submerged ship, the side of my head now coated in blood from my wound. I wobbled drunkenly, my vision doubling. " _Nya!_ "

I called and called to the wind, emphasizing each shout as though it could pierce metal walls as effortlessly as water. No matter how hard I hoped, how badly I focused, there was no response. I screamed my wife's name some more, but all that answered was a soft breeze. Silence. Complete and utter silence.

She had to still be in the ship. The ship that was currently filled with water. She could be feet away from me, for all I knew.

 _She'll drown._

Stumbling quite badly, I narrowed my eyes as I hobbled back over to the hatch, intent on going inside again. But there was a clanging noise emanating from within. Movement. Someone was alive in there. Daring to hope again, I eagerly looked down the darkened hole, but I nearly threw up in alarm as I spied a blur of yellow fabric slowly making its way out into the open air with me.

A snarl contorting my features, I reached down the hatch and bodily grabbed the individual, dragging him free and hurling him through the air. Iroa landed heavily on the roof of the shuttle, his movements stilted as well, shaken from the crash. He struggled to his feet, but not before I swiftly kicked him in the side, throwing him on his back.

"This was _your_ fault, you son of a bitch!" I screamed as I knelt down, hurling my arm and careening my fist into the side of Iroa's helmet. The quarian flew to the ground with a cry, barely able to move as he arched his back in pain.

Enraged, I grabbed fistfuls of the man's suit, hoisting him up so that I could punch him again. Flesh created a muted _thwap_ against metal, but Iroa still bore the brunt of the blow. I repeated the action: grab the suit, punch to the head (and one more time, all!)

 _Kill him._

My punches all gradually became one massive surge for me. Water trailed from my arms with each leering strike. Blood dripped from my knuckles as they were torn apart from scraping across the metal of Iroa's visor. They mixed together in a turgid cocktail, smearing all over the both of us as I laid into the quarian with all my hatred and strength, red filling my vision.

Three punches in less than three seconds. I was uttering completely animalistic noises with each savage blow, tears now streaming from my eyes. Drool mixed with blood began to spew from my mouth – my throat had become aggravated again. I then grabbed at Iroa's neck, forcing him to look at me while I bellowed in his face, misting his visor with red splotches as the blood continued to ooze from my ruined throat.

Just in the nick of time did I noticed that Iroa's hand was slowly inching towards his waist, already in the process of withdrawing a small pistol hidden there. My eyes met his as he knew that he had been caught, and he immediately tried to point the weapon at me.

But I caught his wrist first.

"NO!" I roared as I slammed Iroa's arm onto the metal roof very hard. " _No, no, no, no!_ " Each word was punctuated by another slam, badly bruising the quarian's wrist until he could take it no more. His fingers opened and the pistol was allowed to tumble feet away.

In retaliation, I walloped Iroa with another haymaker, breaking my pinky finger in the process. While he was lying nearly motionless on the ground, I slammed his chest with a double hammerfist, cracking ribs. Iroa cried out before he gave a trembling and explosive cough. My fingers then scrambled up to his helmet, hooking around one of the breathing tubes that ran parallel to his visor. With a wrenching motion, I yanked and the tube popped out, creating a hissing noise as sterile air began leaking. The torn tube jittered all over the place and Iroa yelled in panic as he realized that he was in danger of being exposed to Rannoch's atmosphere.

Finally, after tiring myself out, I ceased my assault. My bloodied, ragged fist was still raised – threating to disperse yet another blow. Iroa trembled in my grip, his eyes shaking and pleading for mercy. I must have looked a fright with the amount of blood streaming down the side of my head and my jaw – the very personification of demonic. I tasted it on my tongue, nearly gagging on the iron flavor. My throat was on fire, I had the worst throbbing headache, and both of my hands were angrily searing from the accumulated cuts and broken finger bones garnered from punching Iroa so many times.

"Are you… going to kill me?" Iroa feebly croaked out around the hissing of his breathing tube, his voice weary.

I didn't answer for a long time. I just kept myself positioned over him, teeth clenched in fury, blood continuing to drip. My face trembled, wet from the ocean spray and my own sweat. I started to shiver – I was cold.

"You would kill _me_ , given the chance," I rasped. It wasn't posed as a question and Iroa knew it. Still, the quarian nodded in response.

"I… would," Iroa desperately tried to make his voice stop quavering, but his efforts were in vain as he was genuinely and deathly afraid. Afraid of me.

This was nothing like when I had Vhen at my mercy, so long ago. He had been defiant to his dying breath, never fully accepting the fact that he had the capability to lose. Iroa, in contrast, was done. Shattered. Finished. He knew where his fate was going to lead him. All that was left was for me to strike the final blow and end the confrontation between us.

But I continued to surprise him in the most shocking of ways.

I shook my head.

"I'm not you," I said simply as I released my grip on the man. Iroa slumped to the ground and I stood, slowly backing away from him.

In a daze, scarcely believing that he was still alive, Iroa drew from his well of energy and mustered himself over to where his pistol had fallen, scraping his fingers across the shuttle as he pathetically dragged himself forward. I did not stop him, not even when he managed to find the weapon. Iroa slowly sat up, a fist clenched upon the pistol, but he did not aim it at me yet. Still I continued to move back toward the hatch, never taking my eyes off him.

"Nya is still inside," I grimaced. "Nya. My wife. Your _daughter_ , Iroa. She's still inside and needs my help. I have to save her or she'll _die_."

Iroa now affixed me with a glare as his arms very subtly started to shake.

I spread my arms wide, panting. "Shoot me if you want. End this right now if that's what you desire. I'm not going to bother with you anymore. I just want my family to be safe. I want my wife. If you're fully prepared to lose everything, then go ahead and pull that trigger."

The pistol lifted, beaded with condensation. Iroa looked at me from behind the sights, struggling to bring me into focus. I edged nearer to the hatch, noting to my dismay that it was now completely full of water, dark and bubbling. Iroa still pointed the barrel of the gun at me, no longer trembling anymore. I sucked in a painful breath and waited to die.

"Yes…" Iroa coughed, eyes watering. "Your family… needs to be safe."

The quarian's finger slipped from the trigger, away from dispersing death, the barrel dipping ever so slightly downward. The lump in my throat vanished and I quietly emitted a gasp.

Iroa then abruptly turned and _hurled_ the pistol off the side of the shuttle, up into the air, spinning end over end, to land with a muted splash in the sea. " _GO!_ " he screamed with finality, voice crackling through his vocabulator, with the kind of desperation and acceptance worthy of a broken man.

Staring at him the whole while, I took in a deep, trembling breath. With one last look downward through the waterlogged hatch, I tensed my body, ready for the inevitable. Time for a swim.

I jumped.

* * *

 **A/N: This was definitely a cathartic chapter for me to write. Seven months of writing and finally the payoff is starting to take form. There are still two more chapters that I have yet to release, and those will be posted as soon as they are ready. Shouldn't be too much longer.**

 **For those of you that have stuck with me thus far, how have you found this story? Was it to your liking? Was there anything you felt that needed improvement? How did you feel about the characters? I'm always on the lookout for constructive criticism. It helps me for when I move onto the next project, which I will announce after this story is done.**

 **Tracklist:**

 **Journey to the Ship/Sagan Converses: "Second Regression" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_. I'd definitely like to see Jed Kurzel get more projects because he does have a unique sound to his work, even though it might be a little mismatched in context. This kind of music is a bit too dreary for an _Assassin's Creed_ movie but it would suit the atmosphere of Rannoch just fine.**

 **Nya + Gravity: "We Have To Go" by Steve Jablonsky from the film _Transformers: The Last Knight_. Say what you will about the _Transformers_ films, but very rarely does Steve Jablonsky give audiences a catchy tune or two to pick from that debacle of a franchise. Jablonsky's work is usually very stale and quite insipid in its simplicity but there are a few cues like this one that are slow and harmonious - good for underlining one of Nya's many moments.**

 **Saw vs. Knife (Kraana's Theme): "Cargo Lift" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien: Covenant_. The brutal percussion and shrieking strings perfectly encapsulate the type of character Kraana is, in my opinion. Try listening to it while reading the fight - it's what I did to gain inspiration.**

 **Crash Landing/Against Iroa (Sam's Theme 2.0): "I Live (Orchestral Version)" by Jack Wall from the video game _Call of Duty: Black Ops III_.**

 **Scuffle On the Shuttle: "Burn or Jump" by Steve Jablonsky from the film _Deepwater Horizon_. This film probably contains some of Jablonsky's worst ever work, but the frantic and completely discombobulated synthesizers convey a situation totally out of control, which suffices for the type of atmosphere regarding a frenzied fight between Sam and Iroa.**


	19. Chapter 19: Blood in the Water

No matter how many times I've done it, there's always that very slight moment of panic – the exact second after the jump where weightlessness begins to take over. You anticipate the bite, the sting of the impassive liquid below, but there's always that notion that I've made a giant mistake, no matter how safe things turn out to be.

This time was no different.

The water rushed over my head immediately with a frothy splash. Less than a second transpired for the slightly chillier sensation to completely encase my body from the moment my shoes kissed the writhing surface. I heard the faint noise of water being churned from my body displacing it and then all sound became murky and muted once my ears had finally been submerged. The rage and tension from the surface became replaced with the calm and tranquil feelings of being underwater, deliberate and tantalizing.

The temperature of the water was cold, but not freezing. I had a brief moment to shiver to myself before the thrashing of my limbs enabled me to warm up a bit. Hypothermia was not going to be a danger to me, in any case. There were worse things lurking in the depths.

With some effort, I managed to wrench my eyes open. That proved to be a mistake at first. The seawater immediately set to work at attacking my eyeballs, the salty brine stinging the sensitive organs in a bitter assault. If could have yelped in pain, I would have, but one needs oxygen to form audible words and there was none to be found while underwater. In spite of the mild agony, I kept forcing my eyes open until I reached the point where I was able to withstand the pain, or I had managed to become numb to it entirely.

The interior of the shuttle was completely unrecognizable to me in its current state. It had flooded with water worryingly quickly after crash landing in one of Rannoch's oceans. As a result, any loose items had become part of the myriad flotsam and jetsam that merely served as another barrier impeding my both visible and physical progress. Most of the electrical systems were dead, completely blacking out the ship's insides, but there were still a few flickering lamps emanating from the hallway beyond. The only substantial light that cast illumination upon me right now came from the hatch that I had just jumped back into, spilling a blazing hot glow so thick it too looked liquid.

My jacket was billowing uncomfortably against me, as was my shirt. I quickly tore both coverings from my body, leaving them to float away and streamlining my form but leaving me more vulnerable in my current state. I didn't care, the clothes would just be an impedance anyway.

Already I needed to breathe. That had to be about thirty seconds of air time – I hoped that my lung capacity would improve as rapidly as possible. I gave a powerful kick and breached the water, nearly bonking my head upon the shuttle's ceiling while I was situated in this air pocket. I prayed that there were more of these pockets – unless I had some innate ability to hold my breath for ten straight minutes, these pockets were going to be necessary if I wanted to live.

If _Nya_ was to live.

I coughed in worry, dimly noting that I was expelling a dark looking substance into the water. My aggrieved throat was still bleeding, evidentially. Another hiccough; this one felt rougher. Holding my breath was going to be tougher than I thought with this injury. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. I never considered that before I jumped in here!

Yet such a handicap had to be disregarded. I had no other choice. Nya was still down in this flooded ship and going back down into it to make sure she was okay was the only option I had rather than wait up top and hope for the best. No, I needed to ensure my family was safe at the risk of my own life. It was the only path that I could be comfortable living with.

How long could Nya survive down here? If she found an air pocket then she would be fine for the time being. She could even hold out for a few minutes while submerged, in fact. But if she was kept underwater indefinitely, her filters would eventually fail and allow water to flood her suit and drown her. By no means was she safe in any case – I needed to find her, and fast.

Before I made preparations to dive again, a metallic voice whispered into my ear.

" _Samuel. Are you receiving?_ "

Who else called me Samuel?

"Huh… Sagan?" I breathed against a mouthful of water I had accidentally inhaled. "You okay? Where's Nya? Is she safe?"

I gripped a metal rung just above my head for support while the geth spoke again.

" _Our chassis has suffered negligible damage_. _Creator McLeod had managed to locate us prior to the emergency landing, however she became separated from us in the crash. There is a collapsed section of the craft blocking our way to her last known location. We are currently unable to access her. But, Samuel… you must hurry_."

"Why?" I mustered as I desperately paddled to keep myself afloat.

" _She is trapped underwater. She has five minutes of breathing time at most_."

The enraged scream I emitted rang loudly in my ears, as did the fierce splash made from me pummeling my fists downward in frustration.

"Shit, shit, _SHIT!_ Where is she?!"

" _Main floor hallway. Forty meters from the bridge. You need to move quickly, Samuel_."

No need to tell me twice.

Furiously inhaling until my lungs were close to bursting, I slammed my head downward, embracing the stinging of saltwater against my eyes, against my tongue. The sea struggled against keeping me afloat, but I surged my limbs in a breast stroke, each ripple clenching all the muscle cords in my arms. It was an enormous effort splaying my arms out, feeling like I was scooping fistfuls of water all around my body. I imagined that there was a ball in between my feet that I squeezed every time they came in for a kick. I tried not to panic and just paddle without abandon, knowing that controlled strokes, as slow as they seemed, was the fastest way to travel while underwater.

The day's exertions were beginning to take their toll upon me; I was feeling worn out already. With every stroke I made, it felt like I was tearing my arms from my body, that the blood momentarily beat from my head, causing gray spots to sear into my vision. Yet I still felt that I was going way too slow – with each breast stroke, it looked like I was only proceeding about a foot deeper into the shuttle, far too sluggish. Desperate to speed things up, I tried pushing my body faster, swimming harder than before, but after a few seconds, I stuttered and halted in place once inky black tendrils had started to snake across my eyes – the onset of a loss of consciousness.

My heart was threatening to pound out of my chest. A headache was trying to crack my skull open. Weakly I kicked myself to the ceiling and when I broke free to breathe in the nearest air pocket, my shriveled lungs inflated gratefully, causing colors to splash over me in a dramatic wave.

Shit, I mouthed, too exhausted to even speak. Almost blacked out there for a minute. Stupid idiot, what were you thinking, pushing yourself like that?! You're not going to be of use to anyone if you drown here today!

Scolding myself over and over again, I soon gained back my courage and gulped down several lungfuls of air before I was ready to swim again. I was in the main hallway, I reckoned, but it was too dim for me to get an accurate readout of the place, and I was not confident enough with my knowledge of the shuttle's interior to determine how far I would need to go until I reached where Nya was. I had to push aside a few floating tarps that had become untangled in the crash as I swam. The heavier objects with more mass lined the floor, polished tools pathetically seizing the few speckles of light to flare not-so-dramatically.

This time, I paced my strokes lest I actually fall unconscious this time. I spread my arms out wide, imagining my fingers clawing into the water and dragging it behind me while my feet continued to crush that imaginary ball between them as they too closed in tandem. Plunging through the darkness, my ears momentarily popped and I had to hold my nostrils as I briefly blew as hard as I could so that I could adjust myself to the increased pressure.

Midway through another stroke, I gave a slight cough, creating a stream of bubbles. The water in front of me swirled with darker colors, the metallic taste upon my tongue accompanying the sight. Dammit, the more I exerted myself, the more damage I was accumulating to my throat. It now felt like I had attempted to gargle a beaker of hydrochloric acid – the fire within my throat was growing to a smolder by now and if I continued to keep this up, I would risk losing too much blood to even make it through the day.

As I surfaced at the next pocket, I tried hard not to look at how much blood I was spewing out of my mouth to dribble down my chin. Tears frothed at my eyes and I angrily clenched my face in response to the pain. I was falling apart with every minute – killing myself with every foot I proceeded further into this shuttle. A sob even managed to wrench its way out of my mouth because I was in so much agony.

 _She needs you._

"I'm… not… giving… up…" I uttered hoarsely, my voice taking on a weird echo in the confined space.

Angrily breathing hard through clenched (and bloodstained) teeth, I sucked in my biggest inhalation ever before I dove down, my face stone as I powerfully swam my way through the ship, plowing aside any obstacle unfortunate enough to get in my way.

After having spent several minutes with long takes of holding my breath, my lung capacity had thankfully increased to a survivable length. After about twenty seconds of doing nothing but swimming had passed, I still felt quite able and conscious enough to keep going for perhaps a minute more. Using this newfound confidence to my advantage, I dared to increase the strength of my strokes, mentally counting each one until I managed to spot something through the murky depths. The dark object was humanoid shaped, pressed up against a door, feebly kicking out as the water tauntingly brimmed over their head.

It was Nya.

My mouth opened instinctively, screaming her name, but all that came out was a large bubble. I saw Nya turn at my approach, the currents in the water giving me away. Her glowing eyes were more evident than ever behind her visor, wide and frantic, but upon seeing that it was me, I could hear a sob echo through the water.

" _Sam!_ " I heard her yelp, which I initially thought was impossible, but then I remembered that water was an excellent conductor and that Nya still had enough air in her suit to speak. " _You're here!_ "

Unable to speak, I let my ensuring grin and nod do all the talking for me. I then reached out my hand to touch her shoulder, finding that her entire body was wired tight – near hysteria. Concerned, my features drooped somewhat, seeking context.

" _You…_ " Nya sounded desperate, almost at the point of losing it. " _You have to help me, Sam! I… I don't know what to do!_ "

Still confused, it took me a few seconds to realize that there was a good reason why Nya had not swum away from the shut door when I had approached.

She was stuck _in_ the door.

The aperture itself was part of a shipwide system intended to close only if there was a need to partition a section of the vessel; like if an area had been afflicted by a hull breach, said doors would shut to seal the area away. The same could occur if the electrical systems had been previously malfunctioning, which they had been, and the doors had shut in response to a sudden flood of water. Nya had been between the doors at the time when they shut and her arm was now lodged between the gate just an inch past her elbow. She had probably broken bones when the threshold had closed upon her limb. She was jerking this way and that to emphasize just how wedged she was; Nya was seriously stuck. I instinctively knew that this was not a simple matter – I would need power tools or a device with enough torque to wrench this door off of Nya's arm and it was unlike that I would find some in a jiffy.

Knowing that I had no time to lose, I rocketed up to the air pocket that was maddeningly inches away from Nya's head. Safety was right there for her, yet it was just out of reach. I took a quick breath before I headed back under to help. I had to dislodge this door so that Nya would not drown!

" _It's not moving!_ " Nya cried as I swam over to where her arm was, her free hand wrenching at the lip of the door for emphasis, but she could not get into a good position to budge the heavy barrier.

My concern now rapidly approaching its peak as well, I gritted my teeth as I too now hooked my fingers around the door. I maneuvered my body so that my feet were planted onto the side of the wall and at the same time, I used my legs to push off while I was yanking at the door in an effort to even move it a centimeter. I howled in a vacuum, nothing escaping from my throat except a few trails of blood as my infuriated mouth opened wide. This continued for about half a minute with the two of us soundlessly working together to pry Nya free, but our efforts would all be for naught, unfortunately. Our combined strength was not enough to shift the door even a millimeter.

 _Shit!_ I mouthed as I struck the door with a closed fist. Panic was starting to envelop me. The door would not move. Desperate, I started searching around the outlines of the barrier, looking for a panel of some kind, maybe hiding away hydraulic lines that I could slice open. No such luck, the walls were barren.

Frightened out of my mind for Nya, I turned to look at her mournfully. I had no idea if I was crying at my impotency or the fruitlessness of the moment, but I know that I was not the picture of hope right about now. Nya, sensing the worst, did not speak, but merely reached out and gently clasped my hand within hers. It was like she was acknowledging that she knew I tried my best, that it was all right, and that she was glad that I would be the last person she was with, if this was to be the end.

Dumbstruck and enraged, I firmly shook my head while I tried to scream in denial. I'm sure the word _NO!_ that I bellowedwas audible, even through the water, conveying all the raw pain I had. I didn't want to go through with this. No one should have to watch their loved one die in front of them.

" _I'm glad you're here, Sam_."

Oh god. That was just making me cry even more. As much as I tried to keep my face stoic, I quickly found out that such an effort was an impossibility. I became wracked with sobs, unable to turn my head away from my wife's mournful gaze. I reached out to touch her, fingers digging into her arm as a silent plea to stay with me. To not just accept death so willingly!

It was unbelievable that Nya had the fortitude to eliminate all her panic in this moment. Christ, she was minutes away from drowning and I was the one in the worse mental state.

 _Don't give up!_ I mouthed to her, my eyes sunken.

" _You've done so much for me, but I'm so selfish for wanting more_ ," she said warmly, soothingly. Her hand then brushed my cheek in a gentle caress. " _We don't have much time left. I… I have an idea but you're not going to like it._ "

Whatever the idea was, it had to be better than floating here helplessly. Any idea would do right now if it had the potential to save Nya. I would literally do anything right now, anything imaginable, in order to save my wife.

I was about to steel myself to be horrified when I suddenly felt a current of warm water brush against the side of my body. Movement. A person. Someone was here with us! Getting a funny feeling on the back of my neck, I turned my head and looked down the hallway just in time to watch a black shape burst from the shadows of the submerged hallway, a glittering and sharp object clutched in a firm hand as they suddenly loomed over the two of us.

" _There you are!_ " Kraana screamed as she swung the knife, the blade slicing through the water effortlessly.

Kraana?! Where had _she_ come from? There was no time for questions, because pushed apart from Nya with a powerful kick, evading the deadly slashes as we struggled to move quickly while underwater.

The older quarian hissed in a combination of anger and pain as she clumsily tried to orient herself, struggling not to turn upside down as her momentum carried her all over the place. This must have been the first time she had gone swimming in her life, for her strokes were unsynchronized, uncoordinated. Her right hand hung limply, barely moving. Injured from the crash, perhaps? No, it had to be before; there was a puncture mark on the front and back of her right palm, almost as if someone had shoved a knife into her limb. Had that been Nya's doing? That wonderful woman. With a disabled limb, it would be an even greater effort for Kraana to swim through the submerged ship, especially since she was a novice to begin with.

But Kraana had a weapon and we did not. There was not even anything in the vicinity that I could use against a knife. By some miracle, Kraana managed to propel her way over to us, her blade clutched in preparation for a backhand swing.

Metal sliced and water churned. Thin bubbles trailed from the tip of the steel as the knife missed us once again, the momentum sending Kraana tumbling.

" _Bitch!_ " Kraana howled, her voice oddly distorted from the water. " _I'm going to kill you, you whore!_ "

Before Kraana could reorient herself, in an infuriated stroke of rage, I lashed my foot out, aiming at the quarian's injured hand, catching it perfectly in a solid strike. Kraana screamed and yanked her arm back as the wound reopened, turning the water around it crimson.

This had to stop. This woman had not only threatened my life, but the lives of my friends, and the life of my wife. On multiple occasions, she had proved herself to be malicious and deceitful, striving only to snuff out those who opposed her. No more mercy. Kraana had to die. Right now.

 _Motherfucker!_ I roared around a mouthful of bubbles, the word inaudible but the meaning nevertheless tangible. I kicked again, this time whacking Kraana in the side of the head, but the water cushioned the blow, even though it must have hurt regardless. Nya similarly kicked out as well, doing whatever it took to keep herself alive in the moment.

In an act of defense, Kraana struck with her arm in a slow arc, avoidable if I had been on the surface. I managed to rear my head back just in time for me to feel a thin line open up an inch above my eye. I winced, blinking away the bloody cloud that eagerly rushed out. Saltwater poured into the wound, attacking and stinging with abandon. I heard Nya scream my name but I disregarded it. I could take these blows for a longer amount of time… as long as I didn't bleed to death from a thousand cuts.

I moved to bring myself more between Nya and Kraana. Nya couldn't move – she was stuck, stationary. I had to shield her from her stepmother's wrath, even if I could be killed as easily.

When Kraana made another swipe, I had to suck in my gut so that I would not get disemboweled. The knife must have cleared my torso by about an inch. Kraana again spiraled out of control, still not having mastered the basics of swimming. I considered making an attempt to wrench the knife out of Kraana's grip, but my chance came and went as Kraana eventually righted herself, using her legs to slowly and methodically swim over to us, grunting like a lunatic.

" _You're not going anywhere except the afterlife!_ " Kraana's determined scream filled the water as she kicked one final time before plunging her knife – right at Nya.

A killing blow. Meant to open up her neck, to create a gash in her carotid artery and deprive her brain of precious blood.

Yet I managed to move in front of Nya just in the nick of time.

My body jerked momentarily as I felt a cold and hard substance intrude into the flesh of my thigh. It was almost like a ripple reverberated throughout every square inch of me, an acknowledgement that I had been hit. I felt muscle and skin tearing, every nerve seemingly delayed as it took an eternity for the pain to crop up.

And crop up it did.

I shuddered and cried a soundless howl as Kraana's knife wedged itself in my leg. Blood swirled around the wound and more salt tore into it with gusto, boiling and burning my insides. My leg went numb in an instant, all movements immediately becoming sluggish. I lost sight of everything, even those I held dear. I forgot where I was, who I was, how to blink, how to breathe. All I knew was the agony seeping from my leg.

Nya similarly cried in pain as she witnessed me get stabbed. Her eyes bulged out, her voice coming out in a terrified roar. Behind her visor, her face turned ghoul-like, her teeth bared and ready to sink in as Kraana floated free just feet away, now weaponless, her knife stuck in my body.

The older quarian looked at Nya at the exact time my wife reared back her foot from her position and unleashed it in a powerful kick.

Pounds and pounds of force. A quarian freight train screaming by, impervious and impassive to anything that stood in its way. The ocean seemed to vanish from the path of Nya's kick, wisely fearful of the wrath contained in the blow itself.

Nya's boot slammed into Kraana's visor perfectly with a vicious crack. Had Kraana's visor not have been damaged, fractured from their previous fight, the final outcome might have differed. But the strained covering could take no more stress, what with the weight of the water pressing onto it combined with Nya's fearsome kick, it was simply too much for the barrier to take.

Nya's kick propelled into the visor… and kept on traveling. Thick glass gave a muted crunch and within nanoseconds, the crack spiderwebbed to the entirety of the barrier before giving way. Bubbles exploded in the shuttle as water poured into Kraana's suit. However, the visor had shattered into shards, sharpened to fearsome points, and Nya had kicked many of them directly into Kraana's face. The remains of the visor sliced into the skin of Kraana's head and were summarily crushed deeper into flesh as Nya's heel firmly impacted dead-center.

The glass tore Kraana apart – her slashed cheeks flapped down from her now-exposed jaw, her nose dangled from strands of sinew, her eyeballs were sliced into pieces to ooze a viscous fluid, and her forehead had been chopped to the bone. Kraana's face disappeared under a cloud of blood, her entire body slackening underwater as she died instantaneously.

There was no time to celebrate as Nya nudged the body of Kraana away with a foot. While she was doing that, I glanced down at the knife still embedded in my leg and, before I even knew what I was doing, I grasped the steel handle with both hands and gave a solid yank. Cold metal withdrew from hot flesh – a weird feeling more than anything else. The smooth and cold surface of the knife brushed against the torn muscle of my thigh, giving me a chill seconds before the fiery pain set in. I must have emitted a noise of some kind midway through doing this because Nya was quickly clutching at me to see if I was all right.

Trembling, jaw locked, I affixed her with a weary gaze. Already I was cursing myself for being so hasty, for yanking out a knife that very well could have been stemming an arterial wound. It wasn't, but that was no excuse for my stupid action.

But Nya was yanking on my wrist that was still holding the jagged blade. Forcefully, she guided it over to her, across her body, and finally to the arm trapped in the door. Nya laid the knife just above her elbow, right where her suit met the door, resting the blade itself atop the rubbery coating. It was when I saw the solemn gaze in her eyes did I realize what she wanted from me.

But how could she ask this of me?

 _No_ , I thought instantly as I shook my head. _No, Nya. Don't make me do this._

" _You have to, Sam!_ " Nya's voice bled through the water. " _I can't be freed! I… this is the only way!_ "

Still I continued to shake my head but I did not pull the knife away. I no longer floated. I merely existed in a vacuum. I could not feel anything else upon my skin – not the water, not the pain from my stab wound, just the sensation of Nya holding onto me as she silently begged me for salvation.

In order to help her, I would have to hurt her.

She had to sacrifice part of herself in order to live.

It had to be me. No one else could do it.

" _Sam, please!_ " Nya cried, shocking sounding close to tears. " _I don't care if it's going to hurt. I'll drown!_ "

Bottom lip quivering, I slowly looked up, trying to determine if Nya truly knew what she was getting into, what she was honestly asking me to do. She had to realize that she could still die if I went through with this, that I couldn't stop such an outcome from occurring. I needed her to tell me straight out, because I loved her too much to even think of doing this to her.

Nya then led her hand to the back of my head, softly guiding my forehead to the top of her visor. My skin kissed the cool glass, finding the warm, white, twin glow of her eyes waiting vigilantly. The knife pressed into the enviro-suit a little more, not enough to tear the material, though.

The quarian held me in her eyes, a penetrating stare that rooted me to the spot.

" _Help me_ …" she begged, her voice softly cracking.

I then broke too.

I lifted the knife away from Nya's arm, but before she could plead some more, I grabbed at one of the thick belts lining Nya's waist and readied the blade for a precise slice. _Sorry_ , I tried to convey to her before I slashed and the belt became free. The knife became momentarily sheathed as I took the remains of the belt, swam over to Nya's trapped side, and wrapped the heavy band around her arm, an inch or so above her elbow. I made sure to tie the tourniquet tight, using a double slipknot so that it would not come undone easily, and I pulled it even tighter to the point where it was handily cutting off all circulation to Nya's arm. She gave a soft hiss in response to the pressure but did not utter any words of complaint.

The knife was back at Nya's arm, never to be torn away again. My body seemed to beat to the tempo of my heart, making me acutely aware of my surroundings. Beside me, Nya gave a muted sigh as she pumped herself full of painkillers in anticipation, courtesy of a few hidden vials her suit held. It took a couple seconds for the drugs to enter her bloodstream completely, but they certainly hit hard within moments. Nya's head lolled and her eyes momentarily glazed over, but she never ceased looking at me and I never tore my eyes off from her either. I had the knife positioned in the right spot upon her arm – I knew what I was doing in theory.

But I still needed that final access, the last utterance of permission.

And Nya gave it.

" _Do it_."

I hesitated no longer.

Pressing down on the blade as hard as I could, I scrunched my eyes as tight as they could go before I wrenched the knife, making the first cut. The suit and Nya's flesh were parted like butter, torn by the serrated edge. It took me barely half a minute to cut through, but there was still the terrifying sensation of metal scraping into bone before it too was sheared, easily sawed with the diamond-coated blade. I coughed more blood from the raw vibrations traveling up my hand and I nearly threw up in anguish. My cutting speed increased, desperate to end this as soon as possible.

I tried not to look at the additional blood clouding the water. I tried not to listen to Nya's screams of pain. I failed on both fronts. It was only when the knife finally ceased to be in contact with anything else, finished with the horrid duty, did I finally drop it, catching the now freed Nya in my arms, her trapped arm still hanging within the doorway.

Nya drunkenly clung onto me, on the side of my bad leg. With one good leg and one arm free to swim, I powered forward with all my might, heartbeat roaring in my ears. I've never swum so fast before, especially not with an adult quarian clutching onto me for dear life. I surfaced one last time in an air pocket before proceeding onward, a watery roar frothing from my lips as I scrambled towards the exit.

I heard Nya moan, driving yet another stake into my heart. I mistakenly took a glance at the stump of her arm as I continued to swim, bringing forth an ache into my own limb that had been previously detached. Only this was from my doing. I had done this to her, my own wife. It had been _my_ hand that had hurt her.

" _Don't… blame yourself…_ " Nya mumbled sleepily next to me, a few trails of blood still leaking from where her arm was. " _Not… your fault…_ "

 _I'll try not to_ , I thought over and over in my head. _You're going to live._

Waterlogged lockers rushed by, riveted floors and hanging lamps. Threshold after threshold became penetrated in my journey, each one of my muscle fibers screaming for respite.

 _You're going to live._

More flotsam. More bodies. All were pushed aside as, at long last, I managed to spy a lone spear of bright yellow light touch the ground just twenty meters away.

The hatch. Salvation.

 _You're going to live._

My limbs felt like they were about to fall off. Nerve synapses were flaring uselessly. My lungs ached, collapsing in on themselves. My eyes bulged in their sockets, affected by the lack of oxygen. The black tendrils were back, eagerly reaching out to pluck me from consciousness. Still I swam, through all the blood and tears. I had to keep swimming.

Ten meters now.

Five meters.

 _You WILL live!_

I reached out a hand and pathetically swung for a rung. Missed. I nearly inhaled seawater in desperation – my insides were now vibrating, clamoring for air. Feebly, I gave another kick, sending us through the murk. Fingers groped out once more, yearning, screaming for that sweet contact.

Cold metal. A ladder.

My hand clenched. Made it.

Quickly, I lifted myself up, once more towards the light, feeling it burn the top of my head. I looped one of Nya's arms around my neck so that I could hoist her up with me. The call of the ocean sang to the both of us, the bright blue sky awaited. A wavy, clear barrier beckoned to be breached. Our heads rapidly approached the top, the water finally beginning to be pushed away as we stepped into the sun.

Mist was expelled from my lungs as a wonderful surge of fresh air ballooned inside me. Each raw breath felt like someone was taking a rake to the inside of my throat and every cough spat both phlegm and blood in a mushy combination. I howled within the hatch, my defiant anthem against the odds that had weighed down upon me. Furiously holding Nya against me, I ascended the rest of the ladder on shaky legs, water sluicing off us both as we became enveloped by light and warmth.

I laid Nya gently onto the roof of the shuttle before my muscles gave out completely. I fumbled for the soaked inhaler that had managed to stay in my pocket the entire time while I watched over my wife carefully. A quick drag of the medi-gel stemmed the bleeding in my throat and I dropped the inhaler through shaky fingers as every atom in my body cried out in relief.

"Ah," I mumbled to myself, my first words since ascension. "We're here."

There was probably going to be additional permanent damage done to my lungs after that little stint underwater, but it was a small price to pay considering how Nya suffered. I gently cradled her body as I examined the stump of her arm.

The knife had cut through flesh and bone cleanly, no ragged tears. Nya's enviro-suit had almost immediately sealed up the site with omni-foam after automatically applying medi-gel to her amputated limb. She had still been exposed to the water so she might get an infection from this, but it was better to have a lesser amount of time with a breach than to have a continuous one. Right now, her suit was all sealed up, the bleeding had ceased flowing, and Nya was drowsily flitting in and out of consciousness, fighting against the painkillers she had saturated her system with. I gingerly untied the tourniquet around her arm – it was no longer needed.

" _Sam!_ " a voice cried, momentarily drawing my attention away from my wife.

Iroa was lying where I had left him atop the shuttle, but my focus was fixated upon the figure that was standing over the man. Sagan, tall and proud, positioned himself menacingly over Iroa, as if he was preventing the quarian from coming closer to us. I smiled at the geth, grateful that he was still okay and gave him a nod of thanks.

Weirdly, Sagan replicated the gesture back at me. That caused my grin to widen even more as I gurgled a pathetic laugh. I'll be damned. The geth catch on fast.

" _Sam!_ " Iroa screamed again as he beheld his maimed daughter lying across my lap. "Is Nyareth alive?! How badly is she hurt? Please, Sam, is she all right?!"

I ignored him at first, now spotting the limp form of Eyzn lying next to Iroa as well. Sagan must have hauled the young man out in a gesture of charity. From what I knew of Eyzn, he was not going to appreciate it one bit – he will probably find the entire thing to be an insult that his life had been saved by a geth. Although he was in no condition to argue his point; he was exhausted and badly injured from our little scuffle. I don't even think that he knew that he was just meters away from me once again.

Iroa pathetically crawled along the ground but was stopped by Sagan grabbing a fistful of his suit from the back, still acting as our protector.

"Let go of me, geth!" Iroa howled at the impassive synthetic. "Sam, please! Make this thing get off me! I need to be with her! She's my only child! I can't lose her too!"

Hugging Nya ever tighter to my body, I finally pierced Iroa with all of the hatred that I could muster, making him withdraw even from so far away.

" _She's not yours to protect anymore!_ " I screamed, keeping Nya hidden from her father. "She's _mine_ , do you hear me?! She will _always_ be mine!"

Even from where I was, I saw Eyzn begin to stir, his head tilting in the direction of his stepfather. What I saw in his gaze was nothing less than pure disappointment and jealousy. It hit me that just now, in this moment, whatever Iroa still had left to lose, he had lost it forever.

"S-Sam…" I heard a faint voice cough weakly from my arms.

"Nya!" I breathed hoarsely, a hand gently coming to the side of her helmet. I mustered a broad smile just for her. "I… I am so s-,"

"Don't say it," Nya shut her eyes. "Don't say that to me. I'm all right. I'm going to be all right."

I started crying again, moved by the spirit of this wonderful woman. "Okay," I whispered. "Yeah, you're going to be just fine, Nya. It's just an arm. They can fix you up, no problem. Believe me, I know."

"Best man I ever knew…" Nya sleepily mumbled as her remaining hand brushed my beard tenderly, lovingly. She sighed and lolled her head back so that she could briefly look up at the sky. "I hate this planet, Sam."

"What… really?"

"Yeah," Nya mustered a laugh despite herself.

"You're being completely serious?"

"I'm not trying to sound ungrateful. I'm glad we went. But… this, Rannoch, it's just not for me." She tried to gesticulate with a hand only to wince and fall limp again, but her voice still held strong. "I've been to so many prettier planets, lots of them with a greater beauty than I could imagine. But on Rannoch… there's nothing for me here except old memories. Emotions I never want to have again. I'd much rather live on Earth, even though I'll never… I'll never be able to take my suit off there. Fully adapt. You know…"

"You mean… you'd honestly like to live on Earth, given the chance?" I asked carefully. "Like… California?"

Nya's eyes glowed happily. " _Yes_ ," she slurred. "Like California. A house by the beach and the forests. I would love that. What a wonderful place that was…"

Her head was drooping back again. Alarmed, I caught her and helped her to lay more naturally over me. Nya's eyes blurred in and out of focus – a sign of major blood loss. As gently as I could muster, I jostled her, hoping to keep her conscious as long as possible. She made a pitiful groan and lowered her eyelids down, but not before I leaned in tantalizingly close, as intimate as I could make it, the kind of closeness only shared between lovers, between family.

"Nya, don't go just yet!" I uttered in a panic. "I still have something to tell you!"

"Whaaa… what is it?" she mumbled sleepily.

My hand caressed the back of her neck at the same time I tightened my gentle grip upon her thin waist.

"I want a _child_ , Nya," I whispered, causing her eyes to dramatically open wide immediately, her affliction forgotten. Bolstered at this success, I mustered a grateful laugh through my trembling visage. "I want a little boy. A girl. I… I don't care which. I don't care that my child will not be able to carry my genes anymore. I want to be happy with you, Nya, and nothing would make me happier than to do this – the two of us, like it was meant to be. We can finally settle down, raise a family together. But I don't want to do this without you. If you're to be a mother, I want to be right there beside you… as a father."

For a moment, nothing happened. Just a singular point in time where all noise in the vicinity vanished entirely, leaving an empty pit, a void, where only the soft splashing of water against the submerged shuttle could be discerned.

Then Nya's bleary eyes closed blissfully as she began to laugh in delight.

"You… you _did_ come up with an answer," she murmured joyously.

"Of course I did. I thought about this long and hard _because_ of you."

Nya wrapped one of her arms around my neck lovingly, her throat clogged with emotion, eyes watery. "You really want this?"

"Without a doubt."

Her head now nestled in the crook of my neck, I felt Nya vibrate as she continued to laugh in her delirium, her completely ecstatic and unbridled joy.

"I don't even know why I even worried," she managed in between peals. "You haven't let me down yet."

"And I don't plan to." I affirmed as I held her close to my body.

We remained clutching each other for the remainder of the period that we were stuck upon this drifting vessel. Nya never did pass out and she only seemed to gain strength the more time went on. I kept her well away from her father, who was still screaming uselessly to be able to go over to her, still concerned for her well-being.

Twenty-eight years too late.

Fifteen minutes later, a dark dot appeared on the horizon. An advancing ship. Sagan announced out loud that it belonged to the quarian military – the Admiralty forces. This caused noticeable stirs in both Iroa and Eyzn. They had nowhere to go and the sense of defeat was finally bearing down upon them. I would have felt some sense of vindication if all my concentration was doted upon Nya's health.

The armed marines hovered above the ocean, extending a docking ramp to take us aboard, placing the two traitors in chains first. Before he was carried away, Eyzn made sure to look right into my eyes, coldly unblinking as he mustered the strength to speak one final time, hobbling along on one good foot.

"For what you did, I swear to you that I will hurt you in ways you could not begin to comprehend."

His sentence was quick and terse, to the point. I did not even bother to acknowledge him, too shell-shocked to come up with a proper comeback. Eyzn was quickly forgotten as he was led away, finally allowing a moment of silence to transpire. I had other things to worry about. Others to care for. The only person that mattered right now was the one in my arms.

But Nya would not be the only one for much longer.

* * *

 **A/N: Hard to believe we're nearly done, eh? Almost eight months since this story started, now about to come to a close.**

 **I'm interested to hear what you think of this chapter. Kraana was one sick woman, wasn't she? I definitely had fun killing her off - she deserved it.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Swim to Nya: "Bring It to My Turf" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien: Covenant_. If you haven't noticed, I'm a fan of these slow and methodical cues that like to build up suspense and action through sound effects and synthetics. I do like big and complex overtures as well but I think the intimacy of Kurzel's tracks work wonderfully in this kind of context.**

 **Kraana's End: "Terraforming Bay" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien: Covenant_. Another case in point. This is one of the most intense cues I've heard in a while and it only gets more terrifying as the orchestra ramps up by adding more and more layers. It's a good thematic conclusion to one of this story's villains.**

 **Arm Off (Rannoch Theme Reprise) : "The Born King" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_. If you haven't had the chance to check this soundtrack out, I highly recommend it. It's the weird lovechild between gritty instrumentals and a wet percussive mix with a little rock influence thrown in. Absolute craziness, but it works.**


	20. Chapter 20: Haven

One month later  
 _Citadel - Huerta Memorial Hospital_

I have never been what one might call an extrovert. For a good chunk of my life I've been able to keep myself entertained solely on the company of myself. It's a much more common mindset than people would realize. Tuning out the expectations of others and focusing only on one person's – yourself – opens up a realm of possibilities. It's very liberating, but indeed lonely.

It was fortunate that I apparently had the ability to activate some of my extroverted tendencies from time to time, especially within the last few years. It has helped to draw me out from the shell that had fabricated around myself, to introduce me to the universe that I had previously been blind to. Those few steps into uncertainty helped me get me to where I am today.

But that was not to say that I couldn't slip back into introversion every now and then. Sometimes, I just needed an hour or two to find some peace and quiet, to recharge my social batteries before the next interaction. It was almost like a massage for the mind, clearing the slate of imperfections.

I could have stayed in this state for the rest of the day, had I not been forcibly reminded of reality.

Someone was shaking my shoulder, gently drawing me out of my reverie. Blearily, I opened my eyes, my pupils tiredly finding focus, to find a nurse, garbed entirely in white to contrast against her scaly blue asari skin, smile warmly at me as I slowly but surely became roused from my little siesta. From where I had been reclining upon my plush chair, I swiftly sat up, a tiny hit of adrenaline jumping through my veins. I switched off the music that had been softly playing on my in-ear implant so that I could quickly listen to what the asari had to say.

The alien had a nametag that read "Dr. Amone" upon her left side. _Reconstructive Surgeon: Johns Hopkins,_ it elaborated below in smaller print. Funny how my alma mater can turn up in unexpected ways. Even funnier was the fact that we were pretty damn far from Johns Hopkins in the literal sense – instead I was seated in the waiting room outside of Huerta's many operating rooms, a few hundred miles above the surface of the Earth on the Citadel.

If anything, you get much better views from Huerta than Johns Hopkins. Not so from the waiting room, though, which looked like the interior of any other hospital, except that one of the walls was a translucent sheet of glass that allowed the bright green glow from the glistening ferns in the atrium to soak over the visitors of the room. A very calming, cool color to emphasize the nature of healing as well as an effort to dispel the artificialness of the space station we were encamped upon.

"Doctor McLeod?" the asari nurse asked, the usual courtesy to which I responded with a nod, my voice halting for the moment. "They just finished with your wife. Everything's all wrapped up and stable. They said that you can go back now, if you wish. She's just starting to wake from her sedation."

I didn't want to inquire further, lest I should discover a problem that I had not already considered, but I had to get any bad news out of the way, if there was any.

"Were there any issues with the procedure? How did she take the… the…"

Dr. Amone simply patted my shoulder in a comforting manner as I rapidly stood to calm me. "She's fine. No complications with the surgery. Her body accepted the transplant without incident. A few months of taking anti-rejection medication and she'll be back to normal."

The relieved sigh made itself forcefully heard as it escaped through a strained windpipe. Gratefully, I looked over to where Chandler and Rie had been sitting next to me, giving them a knowing look followed by a tired grin. This merely served as their cue for them to leap up and, one after the other, strangle me with their own respective hugs. I returned their gestures just as firmly, almost getting tears squeezed out of me, especially from Rie with her iron turian grip.

"Thank god, Sam," Chandler mumbled.

"This is wonderful news," Rie sighed happily, her yellow eyes glowing.

"Best outcome that we could hope for," I affirmed as I tenderly scratched at my beard, noting that I should probably give it a trim at this point. I had been neglecting my appearance, with all of these stressful events that had been transpiring lately. Good thing that I could get back to my old routine very soon. To the nurse, I then asked, "How's Nya holding up?"

The asari gave me a knowing look, the kind of expression that told me she was also relieved to be sharing good news to people instead of bad. "She's doing really well, all things considered. Very strong constitution, that woman. As far as I know, the procedure went entirely by-the-book – no unforeseen issues to be found. After we finished with the transplant, we tested feedback upon the limb to search for any nervous system electrical responses and she was able to utilize most of her core muscle groups in her arm when exposed to slight electrode therapy – at this point her condition with her limb is almost as if she had some slight atrophy occurring there. Like I mentioned before, with medication and therapy, she will not be able to tell the difference between her arms before a year has even passed."

"I suppose I'd better go to her if she's awake. Nya hates hospitals and will want to see me, I bet. What room is she in?"

"Room 19. Do you need me to walk you there?"

"No need," I replied with a polite shake of my head. "I work here. I know the way."

"We'll hang back," Rie waved to me. "Nya's going to want to see you first."

Gratefully, I sent the gesture back. "I'll try not to be too long."

Bidding farewell to Rie and Chandler, I quickly walked to the door separating the outside world from the sterile and chilly world that comprises the beating heart of a hospital. I did not even need any credentials to be let in – all the staff here recognized me and allowed me access without a word, shredding any potential barriers that were keeping me from my wife.

You know, despite being in a place where hundreds of people come every day to get some injury or another all fixed up, occasionally requiring some blood to be spilled or some guts to be pushed back in, despite all the sort of disgusting and potentially traumatic operations that took place just walls away from where I was standing, I was so relieved to be back in a place that was familiar to me. I could take solace in this, knowing that I was on safe ground once more. No one was going to threaten to blow my head off here, count on that.

For a month now, both Nya and I had been anticipating this day together. We had done all the preliminary research together and had made all the proper scheduling so that her recovery could be performed with the best sort of care that could be given in her state.

Today was the day when Nya was receiving her new flesh-and-blood arm.

It took weeks to coordinate this event today. A transplant, a perfectly manageable operation by today's standards, required a ton of cross-coordination between experts across a wide range of studies. Teams of surgeons had to be flown in from Johns Hopkins, the birthplace of the modern transplant procedure, an anesthesiologist had been selected from among the best living on the Citadel, and several experienced aides had been culled from the cream of the crop just to make an operation like this a success.

Normally, it would not be such a circus trying to organize such a team for this one operation, but there was one factor that had a major influence on all this caution: the fact that Nya was a quarian. It was rare, even for the most experienced of doctors, to operate upon a quarian, let alone perform such major surgery on one. An entire wing had to be reserved and supremely sterilized a week in advance just to accommodate Nya's atrocious immune system. Apparently the surgeons had to routinely step into a portable shower every hour to minimize the risk of infection. Knowing the controlled sort of chaos that could transpire within an operating room, I definitely knew that tempers would be flared and that tensions were no doubt high.

The operation itself had taken the better part of seven hours to accomplish, by my watch. I had sat inside the waiting room the entire time, as did Chandler and Rie (which they certainly did not need to do, yet they went with me anyway). I was going to have to send them over a couple of bottles of nice wine for their generosity. With my credentials, I was offered the chance to stand by and observe the operation, but I declined knowing that I would be way too tense to see Nya being operated upon, even if the surgery itself was non-lethal.

Thus I had sat in the waiting room for the entirety of the operation, sans the times I had gotten up for a snack or to go to the bathroom. Initially I had planned to sit back for the first half and read some magazines but once I had sat down to find the nearby tables magazine-less, I had to slap my forehead for my stupidity. No one used print media in the 23rd century – magazines had been made obsolete for decades. Thus I had turned to my omni-tool for my entertainment, which was what everyone did in this day and age when they had time to kill. That was what I had been doing when I had been roused by the nurse, actually – listening to the kind of classic bands from my childhood while I dozed.

Noting the click-clack of my shoes hitting the metal of the hallway floor, I sidled around empty gurneys and stretchers, bustling my way past clomps of pure-white suited doctors and nurses of all races and genders as I headed in the direction of room 19, my pace ever quickening.

Maybe I was just eager to find out if absolution was in my future, after what I had done to her. Hell, I was never going to hear the end of this from Nya, even if everything would turn out all right.

At least I had room to recover – there were others who were not so lucky. On the flip side, Iroa and Eyzn were far worse off than I was. Far, far worse. Last I had heard, after they had been taken into custody, the quarian Admiralty had exiled the two of them in apparently record time once their misdeeds had been brought to light, forcibly kicking them off of Rannoch before they could even blink in surprise. Desperate for an easy way out, the two members of my extended family had summarily been transferred over to the main military force upon the Citadel due to the fact that they had technically assaulted Citadel citizens: Nya, me, and the others. That way, the Admiralty could wash their hands clean of the matter, fully closing the book of what had been the sordid story of Iroa'Kannos. And with Kraana having died out on the ocean, that also must have relieved the quarian leadership about a potential thorn that they had not previously considered.

Ironically, Iroa did wind up closer to his daughter than he figured in the end. Just not in the manner he expected. Nya having disowned him also must have been a shocking blow, a lasting cut to forever remind him of his failure as a parent and as a decent, intelligent being.

The most recent rumblings I had discovered about the two assailants is that they had also required extensive medical care once they had been practically dumped on the Citadel, prior to their detention. Iroa had suffered multiple broken bones, which I had learned that I had caused when I had been rabidly beating the man (I think I must have blacked out while doing so, because I had no idea that I had been so feral and violent during my attack). Iroa had also managed to catch a small infection from a suit breach that required him to be hospitalized for a week – he had managed to pull through with no lasting effects, but I would not have shed any tears if he did die. Nya might have celebrated if that had been the case.

Eyzn, on the other hand, had been the one worse off. He had received cybernetics upon the foot that had been blown off during our little scuffle inside the shuttle, repairing the damage to the flesh and bone that had disintegrated when his shotgun had fired on his extremity. He now had a major limp on his wounded leg, lasting nerve damage that he would never be able to fully shake for the rest of his life. Apparently, I had also unintentionally crushed part of his windpipe when I had thrown him across the room while the gravity had been switched off, permanently altering his voice to a lower pitch – poetic justice in a sense. Iroa, by the end, seemed contrite at least but I knew that Eyzn would continue to hate me long after this event had passed. He was the one who practically lost everything after all was said and done.

For the moment, I could remain ignorant about the man's contempt. There were other pressing matters to concern my mind with.

Like the matter right now, for instance.

Hurrying to the door marked "19," I quickly hurried through the automated barrier and into the cramped decontamination booth. Particalized cleaning agents rained down in a fine spray, misting my clothes with an antiseptic that had a rather acrid scent before the booth pronounced me relatively safe with a blinking green light. Practically prying open the airtight doors, I jogged into the spartan room, barely concerning myself with the huge windowed backdrop into space and the planet below as I, with my heart in my throat, walked up to the bed and yanked aside the curtain concealing my wife from me.

Drawn to the noise, dressed in a powder-white gown while the blankets of her similarly colored bed smothered her form, Nya's unmasked head turned toward me, a wide smile gracing her gray face as she visibly brightened in my presence.

"Hello, honey," she croaked out in a creaking voice, yawning sleepily.

I had been planning to make a few snarky quips, maybe a cheesy one-liner or two, in preparation for this moment. As did most of my plans, this one shriveled up into nothingness the second I saw her face, happy and longing as she had anticipated my arrival. Rather than continue on course and ruin the rather saccharine tone that had begun to permeate the both of us, I decided to go with the natural flow of things as I bent down without hesitation so that I could kiss Nya deeply on the lips.

I felt Nya make a tiny squeak of joy that turned into a purr of content as she synched her desire with mine, returning the kiss eagerly. Every moment was to be savored, to feel her soft lips upon mine, to share the warmth between our bodies, to draw out the taste that we took from each other. In our sensual haze, my fingers found Nya's face, gently touching her skin all over and causing goosebumps to rise from her flesh at the foreign sensation. Becoming drunk from the passionate attention, Nya mimicked my actions, only drawing this moment to a close when I suddenly felt _two_ hands gently planting themselves upon my cheeks.

Breaking the kiss with a gasp for air, I withdrew only to quickly clasp Nya's right hand in both of mine. There it was. Good as new. Right there all along, just like normal. A brand new arm for Nya – 100% natural.

Gingerly, I squeezed Nya's palm and her fingers slowly clenched over my hand. Good muscle response. Very slowly, I traced with my fingers up her arm, trailing over her hairless, warm, and smooth skin, with a simple IV taped onto the back of her palm. I could feel the muscles squirm and tense accordingly, the bones shifting in their usual manner, and the firm tendons twanging as they suitably twitched.

Holding her hand again, I hoped my face didn't look too ashen. "How are you feeling, dear?" I asked her.

"Mmm," Nya murmured happily as her eyes blissfully shut for a second. "Looking up right about now."

"Is it the sedatives or being out of your suit that's making you sappier than normal?"

"Why don't you come closer and find out?" she licked her lips in the dry air.

I chuckled and dryly shook my head. "In a moment, Nya. I want to find out if you're okay. How about your arm? Is there… much of a difference?"

Nya screwed her face up in thought, her arm moving slowly, methodically as if it took a greater effort than normal to use it. "It's weird having six fingers again," she flexed her hand for emphasis. "There's a little numbness… minor delay in response time, but they said that's all normal. I think… I think that I'm going to be fine, Sam."

"You kidding? Of _course_ you're going to be fine," I ruffled her already messy hair teasingly, drawing a laugh out of her plus a playful swipe at my chest.

Nya shot me a wry look, a taunting smile gripping her mouth. "No thanks to _you_ , honey. _You're_ the reason I'm here, remember? Hah! This goes well beyond domestic violence – cutting your own spouse's arm off."

"You trying to make me feel miserable? I'm fighting not to throw up whenever I remember that awful day."

Sensing that she had gone too far, Nya reached over and hugged my head close to her chest, rubbing my scalp soothingly. "I'm sorry, Sam. I couldn't resist the easy points."

"Oh yeah," I sarcastically mumbled, smothered by her hospital gown. "That's you, all right. Always going for the low blows. Mark my words, there will be a time when we will be able to look on this moment and laugh… but it is nowhere near that time."

"I'll wean you into it, you soft human. I can always cut one of your limbs off to make us even."

I jokingly recoiled in Nya's grip. "No thanks! Already had that happen to me, remember? The hell's gotten into you, anyway? You're in a feisty mood."

"Must be the lack of my suit."

"Must be," I agreed. "But that means I can get away with a lot more. Example A…"

Before Nya could inquire as to what I meant, I quickly sent my hand down to tickle mercilessly at Nya's stomach, causing the quarian to squeal and writhe upon the bed as she howled in laughter, her limbs jerking fruitlessly.

"Not… fair!" she managed in between peals. "I'm all… tied up… on this bed!"

"That's karma for you," I retorted, ducking around her flailing arms but quickly stopped lest she accidentally damage herself. Wiping at her now sweaty brow, I lovingly held my panting wife as she slowly calmed down, smug looks on each of our faces. "Truce?"

"Truce," Nya nodded breathily (after she had bitten her lip in mock disgust). "Okay, you win this one. Now we're even. Ugh, I hope I didn't rupture my gut from laughing so hard."

"You're in luck then! You're already at a hospital, with the best people looking after you. If they can fix your arm, they can fix your gut."

"I'd rather have _one_ injury to focus on right now," Nya replied with an impish look in her eyes. Her lips curled upwards faintly. "But I don't care about the best people looking after me here anymore, Sam. That's not what I need – their work is done. All I want – and need – is just the best _person_ to look after me… which is what I have right here. _You_. If that isn't the best thing ever than I don't know what is."

It was almost becoming a recurring gag with Nya that every time she was either unmasked or out of her suit did she start to wax in a sappy romanticism. Not that I could blame her – being liberated from such a form-fitting enviro-suit, even for a brief period of time, had to be one of the best feelings imaginable. Even as she was recovering on this hospital bed, there was still a hint of giddiness within her that refused to be extinguished. Always a ray of optimism locked away, it turned out.

I said nothing for a moment or two, but continued to muss up Nya's always tousled hair. She submitted to this affection with a weary sigh, but with a droll smile upon her face nonetheless. She always had maintained a bit of enviousness towards humans who always seemed to have perfect hair, but I liked the natural, tangled look of Nya's short, black locks. Any other style on her would just look artificial. Either way, she adored the attention imprinted upon her, especially considering that she was getting a scalp massage in the process. It was almost too easy with her in this state to provide comfort and affection.

Nya raised her new arm again so that she could cup my chin. Before she could succumb to a euphoria of tactile stimulation, she pried open her eyes to look serenely at my face.

"One would think that I could have gotten this arm earlier," she sighed as she tested the pliancy of my skin through gradual changes of pressure with her fingers. "A month of waiting, not including all the pre-checkups beforehand, having to suffer through the agonizing phantom pain for what felt like hours at a time. Gah, at least it's over now."

"Yeah, but you said it yourself before," I pointed out as I kissed the back of Nya's hand while I rubbed at her smooth palm. "It takes a month for fully viable tissue samples, crafted from your DNA, to be grown in a vat and ready for transplantation. Plus you have to take into account all the preparation that went into the act beforehand, when they did a complete body scan of you to get the proportions of your lost arm correct for a perfect "fit." The longer the wait, the longer the life of the tissue. Besides, you didn't want to have a cybernetic replacement for the rest of your life, right?"

"Well… yeah, but…" Nya trailed off as she looked at the metallic limb that had been laid gently on the desk beside her bedside next to the gaping window, left there by the medical staff as a memento.

For the weeks leading up to the surgery, Nya had been using a prosthetic to assist her in her daily activities – 3D printed to the dimensions of the arm she had lost. The limb was operated by the use of electrodes, placed upon specific points at what had been the stump of Nya's arm, which enabled the prosthetic itself to be easily attachable and detachable. The electrodes were scarily accurate at translating myoelectric signals from the brain into movement for the prosthetic to enact. The prosthetic itself utilized fiber-optic wiring with a synthesized material on par of the hardness of a diamond to reduce input lag, resulting in a rather responsive faux limb. Despite the seemingly wildness of how far the field of prosthetics had come over the years, this was on the low end of the technological spectrum as the limb itself lacked any sensors for palpable sensation. It could bend and flex like a real arm, but that was about it.

Now the three-fingered artificial limb simply sat on the desk all by its lonesome self. It had fulfilled its purpose for its owner and no one else.

"But, nothing," I cut Nya off with a firm shake of my head. "This is how things work these days. If you were really impatient, you could have applied to have a new arm flash-cloned and attached within a few days. Although you'd be regretting it almost immediately when the arm begins to rot from the rapid decay of nucleic acid bonds before the week is up – which, as you very well know, is a side effect of flash-cloning tissue. They're not meant for long term use. _This_ arm is."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Nya groused as she crushed my fingers with hers in response.

I gave Nya a playful shove on the shoulder. "Don't be like that, honey. You're walking away from this with a brand new arm and not a single scar to be found. See, look at mine!" I brought my left wrist to her arm, the one that had been mauled by Vhen years earlier. True enough, there was a thin line circling around my wrist whereas on Nya, there was not a mark to discern.

Nya did not respond and drew her arm closer to her body with a tiny huff, but followed with a simper and a knowing look that signified that this was one of those rare moments where I had a valid point. If I wanted to be a jerk, I could deign to rub this little victory in my wife's face further, but the timing of such a thing would be highly inappropriate, considering our current setting.

"How's everyone else doing?" Nya asked through bleary eyes. "Do they all know that I'm doing well? I'd hate to keep them worrying."

"You mean Rie and Chandler? They're waiting out in the lobby and they know that you pulled through. They're not all that disappointed that they missed the _fun_ adventures we had on Rannoch, not that I could blame them."

"And Sagan?"

"Still helping with coordination efforts between your people and his at the embassy. He let me know that he'll stop by soon."

Nya gave a nod that she understood – no further elaboration was needed on that point.

The enigmatic geth had, for some reason, chosen to remain with us after our little excursion on Rannoch, like a puppy that followed us home. I think that there was some intrinsic intuition within Sagan that enabled him to place his complete trust in his newfound allies while recognizing the benefits of being around others that treated him with anything other than fear and disdain. It was not like he was actually needed back on Rannoch as his memories and experiences were all collectively shared by the remainder of activated geth down on Rannoch and the cadre there were already making leaps and bounds by leading the firsthand efforts to help reunite their creators with the technological legacy they had forgotten, namely the abandoned buildings as well as the ancestor databanks. The quarians were calling it their most significant re-discovery in their entire history, from what the news outlets were reporting. Flocks of new pilgrims were arriving to Rannoch in light of this new knowledge, now more eager than ever to bask in the wealth their world offered.

Not Nya, though. There was no more interest in returning to Rannoch. She knew where her future lay and it was not on her homeworld.

As such, Sagan put himself to use immediately by opening up a line of communication with the newly established quarian embassy on the Citadel in order to help transition awareness of the geth back into the minds of the public. Gradually the word got out that the geth still lived, even after the war, and this news was met with skepticism but also with a healthy dose of optimism once citizens realized the enormous amount of opportunities this could bring about. It certainly boded well for the quarians, now that they were beginning to renew their partnership upon Rannoch, with the geth assisting with the colonization and manual labor while the quarians helped to facilitate the creation of new geth units. Life was slowly coming back to normal in one corner of the universe, it seemed.

In the interim, Nya and I allowed Sagan to remain in our apartment, to which it could be said that a geth had to be the most amenable sort of roommate I've ever seen. Sagan, being a synthetic, required no amenities nor room, and maintained a respectful and vigilant silence within our presence. It was almost as if he was a statue that only came alive when absolutely necessary, even though this statue had all the free will that could be afforded unto him.

As far as housing goes, Sagan was living the life of luxury, even if he didn't fully understand just how lucky he was.

Upon her stiff hospital bed, Nya squirmed as she scooted to make room, a new longing humming through her body.

"Sit by me," she requested, as far from a command as it was imaginable.

I raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Only if you promise to take it easy? You're still healing."

"I promise," Nya answered immediately as she raised her arms wide. "Come here."

Finding myself eager as well, I shrugged off my jacket at the same time I slipped off my shoes before I very carefully climbed into the rigid frame of the bed, trying not to dislodge any vital tubing that snaked over the sheets. With only a minimal degree of difficulty, I managed to crawl forward so that I could partially lay atop Nya, her arms embracing my shoulders as she sighed in content from the warm contact and weight of my body.

Lying on my wife's thin frame, I breathed in her scent with my nostrils. My cheek rested upon a breast and one of my arms flopped lazily over her belly. The two of us remained enveloped upon the other, for warmth, companionship, love, in an instinctual action that defied explanation. My head was repeatedly and gradually pushed upward as Nya's chest swelled with her breathing. I might have fallen asleep for some period of time, I truthfully have no idea, but the next thing that I can remember is Nya's voice softly flitting into my ear.

"I meant it, you know."

My eyes refused to crack themselves open. "Meant what?"

"When I said that I would rather live on Earth, in California. I… didn't know if you were also considering it as well."

Yawning, I propped myself up on an elbow, slowly blinking. "What brought this on?"

"Nothing did," Nya shrugged. "It's… just something I've been musing on, now that all this craziness has finally passed us by."

"From one issue to the next, huh?" I gave her a mocking grin.

Nya sheepishly bumped her eyebrows now that I scooted myself up to her height on the bed. "You had something else in mind?"

"Actually, I did," I said as I trailed my fingers up her arm, smiling smugly all the while. "I pretty much considered a move to California to be a foregone conclusion eventually. I wouldn't mind going back there and getting a house built near the beach, but that's not what I've been thinking about for the past month now. And something tells me that you've been thinking the exact same thing I have. Call it… paternal intuition."

Now Nya's teeth brightly shone as her lips too parted in a smile. "You mean our family."

"Precisely."

"You… you still want to go through with this?"

"One hundred percent. Do you?"

"D-Do… _I_?" Nya stammered, caught off guard. "Do I? Uh, _yeah!_ I _so_ want to go through with this! I'm all in! I'm-,"

The lithe quarian snuggled against me in a firm manner, trying not to shriek in joy as she broke off from her babbling. Instead, as her words trailed off, her entire body jittered as if she was being electrocuted, completely beside herself with excitement.

"I… I don't know anything on how to be a good parent," she admitted as her eyes darted all over the room.

I chuckled a rough laugh of my own. "We'll learn together. There's so many resources that we can look up. Books, the extranet, et cetera. Believe me, no one's truly prepared for something like this the first time. We're going to be fine. We can do it."

"And you're sure that you will be fine with… with raising a quarian child instead of a human? And that they won't have any of your genes too?"

"Nya, Nya," I murmured as I gently pulled her closer to me, touching my forehead to hers so that her momentary concern could evaporate from her face. "What would you think of me if I backed out now? If I really was so opposed to raising a child of a race different to mine? What's there to stop me? At this point, I have no more reservations. If the end result is just going to wind up with you and I raising a kid together, then that's a kind of future I can definitely get behind."

That immediately seemed to satisfy Nya and she now took her turn to rest her head in the crook of my neck. She seemed so much smaller and lighter without her suit. I could almost imagine hefting her with a single finger, her body light as the air itself. Regardless, I reveled in the privacy of our togetherness, beholden to the rare privilege to witness my wife look upon me with a bare expression of adoration, knowing that no one else could experience such a thing.

In light of her pure and unobstructed love, I could only hope that my own veneration was not too overshadowed. Nya could say a lot without even a word escaping her throat.

I barely kissed her forehead, staring serenely out into space. "I'll make an appointment for us to visit a fertility doctor in a week or so, once you're all better. They've got a reproductive services clinic here on Huerta, so we won't need to go far."

"To find a donor with a similar DNA structure to yours, right?" Nya mumbled against my chest, starting to fall asleep again.

"Yeah, if we don't have a dextro substitute, this isn't going to work."

Nya raised her head so that she could look me straight in the eye. "No matter whose genetic information I'll take, I promise you, Sam, that only you will be our child's father."

My hand came to her cheek, ever so slightly brushing the raised scar that permeated her flesh there. I grinned so broadly I thought my mouth would split wide open. Curious, after spending what seemed like an eternity on a foreign planet being pummeled and beaten both physically and psychologically, it was miraculous that the two of us managed to claw our way out to where we were now.

From the cities of Earth's past.

From the slums of the flotilla.

A new dawn was rising for us both and we were itching to catch a glimpse of the rays.

"' _Father'_ " I repeated breathily, the syllables lingering upon my tongue. "I'm looking forward to being called that. In the same vein that I can't wait to hear you be called ' _Mother_ ,' Nya. With the two of us together, honey, what _can't_ we do?"

Her hands slid around my back, preparing herself for what was to come next. My partner, my wife, hid no doubts, no illusions upon her face. Something was transpiring upon those features, an emotion stronger than any that had preceded it. It filled her, sang within her, embodied her so strongly that even I felt elevated from just her touch, her sweet, bare touch.

"We're going to be the best damn parents ever to our kid," she fiercely proclaimed before she moved forward, our lips interlocking as we embraced in a passionate kiss.

The fickleness of time was a wonder to behold. Within our little white, sterile cube, it was hard to discern the events that transpired around us. With just us making up the entirety of our world together, we shed all others selfishly from our minds as we welcomed our higher selves, our deepest emotions to run free and wild. We inhabited our own plane, able to act out our deepest desires as we pleased in a stillness that lathered the both of us until we were drowning in it, our own private ablution.

Each precise and crystallized moment was savored as we drank from the infinite wells of our love together. With no other obligations pressing upon the boundaries of our minds, our thoughts were on the present and very much of the near future.

Yet the future, important as it was, could wait a bit. We were in no hurry.

* * *

 **A/N: And so, _Progeny_ comes to a close.**

 **It was interesting to gauge people's reactions the further I plowed through writing this thing, because I didn't know what people were expecting with a sequel to _The Quantum Error._ Even I had no idea what to expect for the longest time, which is why it took so long for me to finally figure out a plot that I liked that was not a rehash of the first story (not that I could expect this being my longest ever story in terms of word count). My overall goal was to differentiate it as far as possible from the original entry and get a little more experimental in my approach with regards to characters and the overall setting. I was able to have fun again with my writing, but it will be nice for a little break now, especially after eight months of doing this.**

 **Funnily enough, I wrote _Progeny_ with the intention for there to be a sequel taking place after this one, to create a trilogy. I actually wrote the outline for the third installment at the same time as the second one. So, unless life happens upon me in ways I do not expect, I fully intend to return at some point (perhaps after I tackle some smaller, more original projects) and write the conclusion to the trilogy, placing a thoughtful end on the _Quantum Error_ once and for all. While the outline is technically finished, it needs at least another draft in its current state before I feel that it is ready to be written. I'll try not to leave so long of a gap between stories for the next time, but no promises!**

 **As I say with all my stories, I hope you enjoyed reading _Progeny_. Please let me know what you think of it! I appreciate feedback in any form!**

 **Oh, and be on the lookout for _The Quantum Error: Patriarch_ when the first chapter drops!**

 **Thank you for your attention and patience.**

 **-Rob Sears**


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